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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

GIFT  OF 

Hugo  de  Bussi^res 


The  Stage  as  a  Career 

A  Sketch  of  the  Actor's  Life  ;  its 

Requirements,    Hardships, 

and  Rewards 


The  Qualifications  and  Training  Essential  to  Success — Expert 
Opinions  from  Famous  Actors,  including  Sir  Henry 
Irving,  Lawrence  Barrett,  Dion  Boucicault,  Joseph  Jeff- 
erson, Helen  Modjeska,  Mary  Anderson,  and  Maggie 
Mitchell — Disappointments  and  Pitfalls — The  Actor  and 
Society — How  to  Begin — Dramatic  Schools  and  Teachers 
— Contracts  and  Salaries. 


BY 

PHILIP  G.  HUBERT,  Jr. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S    SONS 
NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

XLbc  ftnickerbocfter  press 

1900 


Copyright,  1899 

BY 

PHILIP  G.  HUBERT,  Jr. 


GIFT 

Ube  ftnfcfeerbocfeer  press,  "Wcw  IPorfe 


PRKFACE 


A  FEW  months  ago  the  daughter  of  an  old 
friend  came  to  me  with  the  following  ques- 
tion :  "  What  shall  I  do  to  earn  a  living?  I 
have  n'  t  a  penny  in  the  world.  I  have  been  fairly 
well  educated,  but  I  don't  know  enough  music  to 
teach  it ;  I  hate  the  idea  of  going  into  a  school, 
even  if  I  could  get  a  school  position,  which  is 
doubtful.  Some  of  my  friends  have  suggested  the 
stage  ;  I  used  to  do  fairly  well  in  private  theatri- 
cals. Supposing  that  I  can  earn  a  living  salary 
by  acting,  would  you  advise  me  to  do  it  ?  What 
sort  of  a  life  is  it  ?  What  are  its  advantages  and 
disadvantages  ?  Why  do  some  people  succeed  on 
the  stage  and  others  fail  ?  And  how  shall  I  go  to 
work  to  get  a  foothold  in  a  profession  that  I  hear 
is  already  overcrowded  ?  ' ' 

An  answer — a  very  inadequate  one — to  these 
questions  is  attempted  in  the  following  pages. 
Many  famous  actors  have  given  their  views  upon 


M872030 


iv  Preface 

various  phases  of  stage  life  through  the  English 
and  American  magazines  and  newspapens,  and 
from  this  mass  of  scattered  material  I  have  en- 
deavored to  extract  something  that  may  be  of 
value  to  the  stage  aspirant ;  but  the  chief  value 
in  this  little  volume  will  be  found,  I  think,  in  the 
information  derived  from  the  scores  of  talks  that  I 
have  had  with  men  and  women  in  the  dramatic 
profession.  One  of  the  teachers  in  a  certain 
dramatic  school  once  told  me  that  he  considered 
his  institution  did  more  to  keep  people  off  the 
stage  than  to  put  them  on  it ;  in  other  words,  it 
deterred  young  men  and  women  from  attempting 
the  impossible.  If  this  little  book  has  something 
of  the  same  influence,  it  may  fulfil  a  useful  pur- 
pose ;  for  I  am  sure  that  it  will  not  keep  off  the 
stage  anyone  who  ought  to  be  on  it,  while  it  may 
discourage  those  to  whom  a  dramatic  career  offers 
nothing  but  disappointment. 

My  thanks  are  due  to  several  of  our  American 
and  English  magazines  and  reviews  for  permis- 
sion to  quote  from  the  contributions  of  noted 
writers  in  their  pages,  notably  to  the  North 
American  Review^  from  which  I  have  made  ex- 
tracts from  articles  by  Miss  Mary  Anderson  (Mrs. 
Navarro,  Jan.,  1889),  by  Mr.  McCullough,  Mme. 


Preface  "  v 

Modjeska,  Mr.  Joseph  Jefferson,  Mr.  Lawrence 
Barrett,  and  Miss  Maggie  Mitchell  (symposium 
of  Dec,  1882),  and  by  Mr.  Dion  Boucicault  (Oct., 
1888);  to  the  Forum,  in  which  appeared  a  notable 
article  by  Mr.  de  Cordova  (July,  1894);  to  the 
Fortnightly  Review,  in  which  appeared  Mr.  Bur- 
nand's  article  upon  the  social  status  of  the  stage 
Qan.,  1885)  ;  and  to  the  Nineteenth  Century,  in 
which  are  to  be  found  several  of  Sir  Henry 
Irving' s  essays  (Feb.,  1895;  March,  1895). 

P.  G.  H.,  Jr. 
Nrw  York  City, 
November,  i8gg. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.— Th^  Growing  Importance  oif  the  Stage 


AS  A  Career 

II.— To  Act  or  not  to  Act 
III.— The  Sociai,  Status  oe  the  Stage  . 
IV.— The  Stage  as  an  Artistic  Career 

v.— QUAI.IEICATIONS  FOR  STAGE  SUCCESS 

VI.— The  Best  Training  for  the  Stage 
VII.— Dramatic  Schooi^  and  Teachers 
VIII.— Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life. 
IX.— The  Actor  off  the  Boards     . 
X.— The  Stage  as  a  Career— Conci^usion 
Index ,        ,        . 


I 
8 

27 

55 
68 

93 
112 
124 
157 
175 
189 


THE  STAGE  AS  A  CAREER 


CHAPTKR  I 


THK   GROWING   IMPORTANCK  OF  TH^   STAGK  AS 
A  CAREJEJR 

MR.  F.  C.  BURNAND,  the  editor  of  Punch, 
in  the  course  of  a  magazine  article  from 
which  I  shall  have  occasion  to  quote  at  length, 
remarks,  in  writing  about  the  social  status  of  the 
actor,  that  the  theatrical  business  or  profession 
confers  in  itself  no  honor  upon  its  members.  To 
belong  to  the  Bar,  to  the  Army,  to  the  Church, 
to  mercantile  life,  gives  a  man  a  certain  standing 
in  the  community.  To  be  an  actor  affords  a  man 
no  standing  that  is  of  any  value  in  the  battle  of 
life.  He  may,  by  dint  of  genius,  hard  work,  high 
ideals,  and  a  clean  life  help  the  stage  ;  the  stage 
will  not  help  him.     We  may  deplore  the  fact,  but 


2  The  Stage  as  a  Career 

we  cannot  deny  that  the  stage  to-day  as  an  art  or 
profession  rests  under  a  certain  social  stigma 
which  is  more  easily  felt  than  defined.  It  is  true 
that  actors  are  sometimes  received  in  excellent 
society,  especially  in  England,  and  the  fact  that 
Henry  Irving  is  now  entitled  to  write  ' '  Sir  " 
before  his  name  has  led  many  people,  and  very 
rightly,  to  hope  that  the  dark  ages  of  the  dramatic 
profession  have  ended  ;  but  in  a  mercantile  com- 
munity such  as  that  of  New  York  or  of  any  of  our 
large  cities  no  one  is  likely  to  deny  that  the  shoe 
dealer,  for  instance,  is  held  in  infinitely  higher 
esteem  than  the  actor.  A  young  man  fresh  from 
school  may  enter  the  shoe  business,  especially  the 
wholesale  shoe  business,  and  his  friends  near  and 
far  will  approve  his  choice  ;  his  parents  will  be 
certain  not  to  object,  and  mothers  of  marriageable 
daughters  will  smile  upon  him.  But  let  him  an- 
nounce his  intention  of  becoming  an  actor.  Will 
his  family  friends  approve  ?  Or  will  matrons 
with  daughters  smile  upon  him  ?  Far  from  it. 
It  is  rather  hard  to  say  just  why  this  should  be 
so  and  yet  we  all  know  that  it  is  so. 

If  we  look  at  what  the  young  man  who  deals  in 
shoes  accomplishes  and  compare  it  with  the  actor's 
achievements,  the  problem  appears  more  puzzling 


Its  Growing  Importance         3 

than  ever.  The  shoe  dealer  provides  us  with 
shoes,  and  certainly  we  are  glad  to  have  them  ; 
the  actor  amuses  us,  makes  us  forget  for  a  few 
hours  the  miseries  of  daily  life,  and  perhaps  gives 
us  new  ideas  or  noble  thoughts  to  ponder  over 
long  after  we  leave  the  playhouse.  At  least  this 
should  be  the  ministry  of  the  stage.  Certainly 
the  contribution  to  the  sum  of  our  happiness  made 
by  the  actor  may  be  as  great  as  that  made  by  the 
shoe  dealer.  It  may  be  said,  to  be  sure,  that 
shoes  are  necessities,  while  we  can  do  without 
theatres.  But  neither  are  books  or  pictures  ne- 
cessities, and  yet  writers  and  painters  are  held  in 
higher  esteem,  socially,  than  actors,  although 
not  so  high  as  the  lawyer,  the  doctor,  the  soldier, 
or,  in  a  mercantile  community,  not  so  high  as  the 
wholesale  shoe  dealer. 

Probably  a  question  of  money  is  at  the  bottom 
of  most  such  distinctions.  The  shoe  dealer  makes 
more  money  in  the  long  run  than  the  actor.  Not- 
withstanding the  ups  and  downs  of  mercantile 
life — I  believe  experts  have  figured  out  that  ninety 
out  of  every  one  hundred  business  men  become 
bankrupt  at  some  stage  of  their  career— the  busi- 
ness man  makes  more  money  than  the  actor;  the 
latter' s  business  is  seldom  very  profitable  and  the 


4  The  Stage  as  a  Career 

precariousness  of  all  theatrical  enterprises  is  or  has 
been  notorious.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  repeat 
here  any  details  concerning  the  low  esteem  in  which 
acting  and  actors  were  held  during  the  past  in 
England  and  on  the  Continent.  In  the  Middle 
Ages  actors,  like  poets  and  musicians,  were  more 
or  less  upon  a  footing  with  the  household  servants 
of  the  great ;  in  fact,  often  were  the  household 
servants  of  the  nobility.  It  was  considered  a  tre- 
mendous piece  of  presumption  when  lyiszt  de- 
clined to  enter  a  Paris  nobleman's  house  by  the 
escalier  de  service^  in  other  words  the  back  stairs, 
but  insisted  upon  going  up  with  the  other  guests 
or  not  at  all.  In  great  English  houses  it  was  not 
uncommon  twenty  years  ago  to  see  a  silken  cord 
placed  somewhere  in  one  of  the  drawing-rooms  to 
separate  the  artists  or  performers  at  a  formal 
soirie  from  the  invited  guests.  Even  so  recently 
as  sixty  years  ago  actors  were  legally  designated 
upon  the  English  statute-books  as  vagabonds. 
The  strolling  player  was  but  one  step  above  the 
tramp.  In  France  the  actor  was  almost  invariably 
the  dependent  of  some  nobleman,  while  Goethe 
has  sketched  in  Wilhelm  Meister  the  servile  con- 
dition of  the  German  comedian  in  the  last  century. 
In  England,  as  on  the  Continent,  the  actor  was 


Its  Growing  Importance  5 

too  often  a  loose  sort  of  fellow  and  the  actress  not 
a  whit  better. 

When  the  actor  began  to  make  money  the  situ- 
ation improved.  The  fact  that  Kdwin  Forrest 
accumulated  a  fortune  raised  the  dignity  of  the 
dramatic  profession  immensely  in  the  eyes  of  the 
American  community,  and  we  must  look  in  the 
same  direction  for  further  improvement.  Just  in 
so  far  as  our  actors  and  managers  make  money, 
just  in  so  far  as  the  stage  becomes  a  recognized 
business  enterprise,  will  the  profession  be  likely 
to  gain  in  social  prestige.  The  most  hopeful  sign 
in  this  matter  to-day  is  that  theatrical  enterprises 
are  now  conducted  more  and  more  upon  strictly 
business  principles.  The  manager  is  now  often  a 
shrewd  business  man,  with  the  inevitable  result 
that  the  actor  is  less  and  less  of  a  Bohemian.  Of 
course  the  shrewd  business  man  is  not  often  an 
artist,  but  he  may  be  shrewd  enough  to  employ 
artists  for  the  work  which  requires  them.  It 
would  be  well  if  the  supreme  head  of  a  great 
theatre  was  always  an  artist,  but  the  fact  remains 
that  great  actors  are  commonly  poor  business 
men.  They  are  prosperous  only  so  long  as  they 
avoid  responsibility  of  management.  Kdwin 
Booth  ruined  himself  with  a  theatre  of  his  own, 


6  The  Stage  as  a  Career 

and  even  Sir  Henry  Irving  seems  to  have  lost 
money  in  giving  England  the  most  perfect  the- 
atrical performances  of  our  century. 

Of  late  years  the  business  man  has  entered  the 
theatrical  domain,  and  as  a  consequence  we  hear 
less  of  the  "stranding"  of  companies.  I^arge 
capital  is  invested  in  theatrical  enterprises  and 
one  man  may  manage  a  dozen  companies  more 
easily  and  with  better  results  than  might  have 
been  thought  possible  a  score  of  years  ago.  We 
hear  a  great  deal  about  the  debasement  of  the 
theatre  through  the  artistic  incompetence  of  men 
who  are  merely  speculators,  caring  nothing  what- 
ever for  the  artistic  side  of  their  work  and  looking 
only  to  the  number  of  dollars  they  may  get  by  fair 
means  or  foul.  Unquestionably  there  is  some 
truth  in  such  charges  ;  but  at  the  same  time  it 
should  not  be  forgotten  that  strict  business  man- 
agement may  perfectly  well  go  hand  in  hand  with 
keen  artistic  intelligence  and  a  conscience,  and 
when  a  man  possessing  these  attributes  is  found 
at  the  head  of  important  theatrical  enterprises  he 
may  do  much  in  a  few  years  to  make  the  theatri- 
cal profession  one  in  which  a  young  man  or  a 
young  woman  may  enter  with  high  hopes  of  find- 
ing in  it  a  career  of  usefulness,  success,  and  honor. 


Its  Growing  Importance  7 

Few  persons  outside  of  the  theatrical  business 
have  any  idea  of  its  extent  in  this  country  to-day. 
According  to  the  latest  statistics  there  are  about 
eight  thousand  stage  performers  in  the  United 
States,  to  which  number  must  be  added  about  as 
many  more  persons  employed  as  scenic  artists, 
stage  hands,  costumers,  and  theatre  employees, 
making  an  army  of  fifteen  thousand  strong  who 
look  to  the  stage  for  support.  These  are  em- 
ployed by  three  hundred  theatrical  companies, 
with  an  average  of  twelve  actors  and  actresses  in 
each  company,  making  a  total  of  three  thousand 
six  hundred  persons.  If  we  add  the  operetta  and 
variety  companies,  some  of  which  employ  half  a 
hundred  people,  we  have  a  total  of  about  five 
thousand.  The  other  three  thousand  persons  of 
this  army  of  eight  thousand  are  unemployed  ; 
and  this  is  one  of  the  dangerous  features  of  the 
business  for  the  stage  aspirant.  It  is  already 
crowded,  with  no  prospect  of  a  diminution  of  the 
ranks.  I^ast  year  one  of  our  dramatic  schools 
received  applications  from  four  thousand  young 
people — men  and  women — who  wanted  to  know 
upon  what  terms  they  could  get  instruction  and 
asking  for  advice  as  to  whether  it  would  be  well 
for  them  to  study  for  the  stage. 


CHAPTKR  II 

TO  ACT  OR  NOT  TO  ACT 

IS  it  wise  for  a  man  or  woman  of  education  and 
intelligence  to  adopt  the  stage  as  a  profes- 
sion ?  This  is  a  question  that  I  have  often  turned 
over  in  my  mind,  especially  since  Mr.  Franklin 
Sargent,  the  head  of  a  dramatic  school  already 
mentioned,  told  me  that  a  large  part  of  his  labors 
consisted  in  turning  away  from  the  profession 
young  men  and  women  who  wished  to  become 
actors.  One  evening,  recently,  chance  threw  me 
among  the  members  of  a  theatrical  company  of 
good  repute  then  playing  at  one  of  our  New  York 
theatres,  and  I  determined  to  put  the  question 
point-blank  to  a  few  persons  of  the  company 
whose  opinions  upon  this  matter  might  well  be 
worth  having.  At  the  first  opportunity  I  took 
the  leading  comedian  aside.  He  is  a  man  whom 
the  public  and  the  profession  consider  to  have 
8 


To  Act  or  not  to  Act  9 

made  a  success  upon  the  stage,  a  college  man  and 
a  gentleman.  For  the  last  ten  years  he  has  never 
lacked  an  engagement  at  a  salary  of  from  $75  to 
$150  a  week.  At  the  time  I  speak  of  he  was  re- 
ceiving about  the  last-named  sum,  and  unless 
there  should  be  a  series  of  disastrous  seasons  for 
his  managers,  he  will  probably  continue  to  receive 
about  this  salary  or  perhaps  a  little  more  for  years 
to  come.  Should  he  become  a  successful  star  with 
an  interest  in  the  profits  of  the  business,  he  may 
earn  a  great  deal  more  money  ;  but  I  am  writing 
of  the  rank  and  file  of  the  profession.  The  season 
with  the  company  in  question  lasts  about  ten 
months,  so  that  this  gentleman,  whom  I  shall  call 
Mr.  Black,  receives  about  $6000  a  year  for  his 
services. 

''  Mr.  Black,"  said  I,  ''  the  public  looks  upon 
you  as  a  successful  comedian.  You  are  always 
employed  at  a  good  salary.  If  you  were  a  mar- 
ried man  and  had  boys  of  your  own  would  you 
encourage  them  to  look  forward  to  the  stage  as 
their  life  work?  " 

**  No,"  answered  Mr.  Black,  without  hesitation, 
'  *  I  should  do  everything  to  keep  them  out  of  this 
business,  and  I  think  that  nearly  all  actors  above 
the  rank  of  the  strolling  Bohemian  will  agree  with 


lo         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

me  unless  they  have  succeeded  in  making  a  star 
position  for  themselves.  There  are  only  a  few 
stars  and  thousands  of  actors.  I  will  give  you 
briefly  some  of  the  advantages  and  disadvantages 
of  the  life  and  then  you  can  judge.  lyct  us  take 
the  bright  side  first  :  An  actor  in  my  position  is 
not  worked  hard,  for  he  is  likely  to  play  not  more 
than  one  or  two  parts  during  the  season,  so  that 
there  is  comparatively  little  studying  to  be  done. 
This  being  the  case  his  work  is  confined,  after  the 
few  weeks  of  preparatory  rehearsals  and  study, 
to  the  three  and  a  half  hours  of  the  evening,  from 
seven-thirty  to  eleven,  during  which  time  he  is  at 
the  theatre.  If  his  part  is  a  congenial  one,  I  may 
say  that  the  actor,  as  a  rule,  enjoys  his  work. 
Public  praise  and  applause  are  pleasant  to  every 
one,  and  probably  more  so  to  an  actor  than  to 
others,  for  to  him  it  means  bread  and  butter. 
Therefore,  an  evening  during  which  he  is  often 
applauded  and  during  which  he  sees  and  feels 
that  the  audience  enjoys  his  performance  is 
naturally  a  pleasant  one.  If  the  company  is 
made  up  of  decent  people,  he  is  likely  to  have  a 
fairly  agreeable  time  of  it  among  his  fellow- 
players.  During  the  day,  aside  from  occasional 
rehearsals  when  new  members  are  called  into  the 


To  Act  or  not  to  Act  ii 

company,  his  time  is  his  own,  to  employ  as  he 
likes.  When  travelling — and  all  companies,  even 
the  best  of  the  New  York  stock  companies,  do 
some  travelling — the  stops  are  usually  for  a  week 
or  longer,  giving  the  actor  a  chance  to  see  many 
cities  and  make  many  acquaintances  ;  if  he  is  a 
bicycler  he  can  take  his  wheel  along  and  scour 
the  country.  If  he  is  fond  of  reading  and  study- 
ing, he  has  the  whole  day  for  it.  A  man's  ex- 
penses even  when  travelling  need  not  exceed  $25 
or  $30  a  week,  as  he  has  only  his  board  to  pay,  so 
that  upon  a  salary  of,  say  $100  a  week,  he  should 
be  able  to  save  money  if  a  bachelor,  or  able  to 
support  a  family  in  comfort  if  he  has  one.  So  far 
as  money  goes  an  actor  during  the  years  from,  say 
twenty-five  to  fifty,  is  about  as  well  off  as  most 
men  of  his  intelligence  and  education. 

*  *  There  is  a  more  or  less  widespread  notion  that 
all  successful  actors  indulge  in  wine  suppers,  go 
to  bed  at  dawn,  get  up  at  noon,  and  live  a  wild 
Bohemian  sort  of  life.  Nothing  is  further  from 
the  truth.  The  average  successful  actor,  a  mem- 
ber of  a  reputable  company,  is  apt  to  be  a  steady- 
going  man,  careful  of  his  health,  who  gets  to  bed 
before  midnight,  eats  and  drinks  wisely,  in  fact 
one  who  introduces  rules  into  his  life.     Were  it 


12         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

otherwise  he  would  soon  cease  to  hold  his  posi- 
tion. The  whole  theatrical  business  has  changed 
very  much  for  the  better  in  the  last  thirty  years 
and  with  it  the  actor.  I  speak,  of  course,  of  the 
best  managers  and  companies.  The  element  of 
chance  exists  in  the  theatrical  business  as  in  all 
other  business,  but  the  men  now  at  the  head  of 
important  companies  and  theatres  have  large 
capital  behind  them.  When  the  season  is  over, 
say  in  June,  the  actor  is  free  to  spend  the  summer 
wherever  fancy  leads  him.  Many  of  us  have  little 
country  homes  where  we  live  from  June  to  Octo- 
ber, enjoying  bur  gardens,  our  tennis,  and  golf, 
and  the  chance  to  become  acquainted  with  our 
families,  if  we  have  any.  So  far  as  absence  from 
home  goes,  even  the  stage-people  doomed  to  travel 
all  the  season  are  no  worse  off  than  the  thousands 
of  commercial  travellers,  and  perhaps  they  are 
better  off  in  that  they  have  longer  vacations.  So 
much  for  the  bright  side  of  the  business. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  the  other  side  of  the 
picture  needs  a  longer  story.  In  the  first  place, 
unlike  the  doctor,  the  lawyer,  the  business  man, 
the  actor  is  apt  to  find  his  value  steadily  decreas- 
ing after  a  certain  age.  His  elasticity,  high 
spirits,  strength — all  part  of  his  stock  in  trade— 


To  Act  or  not  to  Act  13 

begin  to  wane  when  he  has  passed  his  fiftieth 
year,  and  often  before  that.  Just  at  the  time  of 
life  when  a  man  begins  to  love  his  fireside  above 
all  other  joys  the  actor  has  still  to  travel  from  one 
city  to  another.  When  he  can  no  longer  play 
leading  parts  his  salary  falls.  Or  he  may  find 
himself  out  of  an  engagement  altogether,  with  no 
other  work  open  to  him,  for  an  old  actor  is  not  fit 
for  business  ;  he  has  no  training  for  it.  And  this 
dark  feature  of  the  profession  is  not  the  worst  of 
it.  More  than  people  imagine  is  success  upon  the 
stage  a  matter  of  chance.  An  actor  is  almost 
wholly  dependent  for  his  success  upon  the  parts 
he  may  get.  The  public  demand  new  plays  all 
the  time  and  one  play  seldom  outlasts  its  first 
season.  One  season  the  actor  may  have  a  part 
that  suits  him  and  in  which  he  does  admirably  ; 
the  next  year  he  may  have  to  take  a  part  out  of 
which  he  can  make  but  little.  Virtually  he  has 
no  choice  ;  he  must  take  what  his  manager  as- 
signs him  and  do  the  best  he  can.  I  have  in  mind 
a  colleague  who,  after  playing  successfully  for 
vSeveral  years,  began  to  lose  his  hold  upon  the 
public  simply  because  he  was  compelled  to  play 
parts  that  offered  him  nothing.  The  fashion  in 
plays  changes  as  in  everything  else.     For  some 


14         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

years  the  public  wants  romantic  plays,  in  which 
one  actor  may  do  admirably  ;  a  few  years  later 
domestic  comedy  may  be  all  the  go,  in  which  your 
romantic  actor  is  at  sea.  A  young  man  who  deals 
in  shoes  and  makes  himself  master  of  the  shoe 
business  can  always  find  shoes  to  sell  and  people 
never  decline  to  wear  shoes.  An  actor  is  some- 
what in  the  position  of  a  business  man  asked  to 
deal  in  shoes  this  year,  in  lard  the  next,  and  in 
brushes  and  combs  the  year  after  that.  At  any 
moment  the  ground  may  slip  from  under  his  feet 
owing  to  a  change  in  public  taste.  The  man  of 
whom  I  have  just  spoken,  after  three  seasons  in 
which  his  work  was  almost  negative  owing  to  un- 
interesting parts  or,  let  us  say,  unsuitable  parts, 
suddenly  got  a  part  last  season  which  suited  him 
and  in  which  he  won  no  end  of  applause.  A 
friend  of  his  came  one  night  to  congratulate  him 
upon  having  recovered  his  old  skill  and  his  power 
to  interest  and  amuse  the  public.  The  truth  was 
that  he  had  displayed  just  as  much  skill  and 
worked  harder  than  usual  during  those  three 
miserable  years;  had  chance  not  thrown  this  good 
part  in  his  way,  the  public  and  his  friends  might 
have  continued  to  think  that  he  had  '  lost  his 
grip,'  as  they  expressed  it. 


To  Act  or  not  to  Act  15 

"  Perhaps  the  worst  feature  of  an  actor's  life  is, 
however,  the  lack  of  a  home.  Some  students  of 
stage  life  assert  that  an  actor  should  not  be  mar- 
ried. If  he  takes  this  view  of  it  and  remains  a 
bachelor,  the  chances  are  that,  having  no  use  for 
money,  he  saves  none  ;  a  good  salary  may  all  go 
in  late  suppers  and  other  dissipations  to  the  final 
undoing  of  the  man.  The  wandering  life  of  an 
actor,  now  with  this  company,  now  with  that :  the 
more  or  less  Bohemian  element  that  exists  in  all 
companies  is  fatal  to  a  bachelor  with  more  money 
than  he  needs  unless  he  is  a  man  of  strength  of 
character  and  high  aims.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  upon  the  whole  the  married  actor  is  better 
off,  notwithstanding  the  lack  of  home  life,  than 
the  bachelor  ;  he  has  a  use  for  his  salary  ;  part 
of  the  year  he  is  likely  to  be  employed  in  the  city 
where  his  home  is,  and  he  can  look  forward  to  a 
long  vacation  and  a  summer  with  his  wife  and 
children.  Nevertheless  it  is  a  great  hardship  to 
live  a  wandering  life,  especially  after  a  man  has 
lost  the  en  thusiasm  of  youth .  Of  course  all  young 
actors  worth  their  salt  start  out  with  high  ideals 
and  the  hope  that  they  may  raise  the  standard  of 
dramatic  art  and  incidentally  make  fame  and  for- 
tune for  themselves.     By  the  time  that  he  has 


1 6         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

reached  forty  without  setting  the  world  afire,  the 
enthusiast  has  settled  down  and  considers  his 
daily  or  rather  nightly  work  from  a  purely  busi- 
ness point  of  view.  Then  it  becomes  hard  to  live 
without  wife  or  children. 

"  As  I  look  around  upon  the  njen  whom  I  knew 
in  college  I  do  not  know  that  I  can  complain  of 
my  lot,  financially.  But  these  men,  some  of  them 
in  business,  some  lawyers,  some  doctors,  will  be- 
gin to  enjoy  greater  rewards  just  at  the  time 
when  my  art  ceases  to  produce  as  much  as  it  does 
now.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  same  amount  of 
brains,  energy,  and  work,  given  to  business  or  a 
profession  will  produce  larger  average  results  in 
the  end,  and  there  is  sure  to  be  far  less  personal 
discomfort  than  in  the  average  stage  career." 

If  public  opinion  considers  the  stage  rather  a 
doubtful  career  for  a  man,  it  has  no  doubts  at  all 
about  its  inadvisability  for  a  woman,  and  it  was 
somewhat  to  my  surprise  that  Miss  White,  one  of 
the  leading  women  of  the  company- 1  speak  of,  de- 
clared that  in  her  opinion  the  stage  offered  the 
ideal  career  to  a  clever  girl  obliged  to  earn  her 
own  living.  The  lady  in  question  has  been  on 
the  stage  for  four  years,  during  which  time  she 
has  been  steadily  employed  at  a  salary  varying 


To  Act  or  not  to  Act  17 

from  $30  to  $50  a  week.     She  was  graduated  from 
one  of  the  large  dramatic  schools  in  New  York. 

**  Four  years  ago,"  she  said,  "  I  had  to  choose 
some  way  of  earning  my  living.  I  could  prepare 
myself  for  teaching  in  public  schools,  I  could 
study  typewriting  or  nursing,  or  I  could  try  for 
the  stage.  I  went  over  the  many  careers  now 
said  to  be  open  to  women  and  crossed  out  all  but 
these  four ;  I  had  no  vocation  for  authorship, 
painting,  music,  book-keeping,  flower-growing, 
cooking,  dressmaking,  or  millinery,  in  all  of 
which  careers  I  am  told  that  women  are  doing 
well.  It  happened  that  I  had  some  friends  on 
the  stage,  some  who  were  stenographers,  and 
some  who  were  teaching.  I  talked  with  them  all 
and  decided  for  the  stage,  notwithstanding  stren- 
uous opposition  on  the  part  of  friends  who  de- 
clared that  I  would  lose  social  caste  and  become  a 
wandering  Bohemian.  I  studied  for  two  years 
and  then  obtained  a  position  at  a  salary  that  just 
paid  my  expenses,  after  which  I  did  a  little  better. 
Having  now  had  some  years'  experience  with  the 
life,  I  don't  hesitate  to  say  that  for  a  girl  who  has 
no  strong  bent  for  music,  or  art,  or  literature  the 
stage  offers  far  more  than  any  career  open  to  wo- 
men.    As  to  social  position,  I  don't  see  that  one 


1 8         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

forfeits  more  by  stage  work  than  by  typewriting, 
or  teaching,  or  nursing,  in  none  of  which  voca- 
tions can  a  woman  find  much  time  for  playing  the 
fashionable  butterfly.  We  hear  a  good  deal  of 
talk  as  to  the  bad  effect  of  stage  life  upon  a  girl's 
manners  ;  a  few  years  of  wandering  from  town  to 
town,  of  life  in  hotels,  of  forced  association  with 
some  people  who  are  not  over-nice — for  there  may 
be  such  in  every  company — will  undoubtedly  have 
some  effect ;  and  this  knowledge  must  make  every 
thoughtful  girl  anxious  to  counteract  such  in- 
fluences by  every  means  in  her  power.  One  can- 
not live  apart  from  the  company,  especially  when 
travelling  ;  not  only  is  one  thrown  with  the  other 
actors  before  the  footlights  and  behind  the  scenes, 
but  there  is  the  life  in  hotels  when  a  girl  is  com- 
pelled to  associate  with  the  other  members  of  the 
company,  for  she  must  eat  with  them  and  often 
share  her  room  at  the  hotel,  as  well  as  her  dress- 
ing-room at  the  theatre,  with  some  lady  of  the 
company.  Then  there  are  long  railway  journeys 
when  the  members  of  a  theatrical  company  must 
do  the  best  they  can  to  amuse  each  other  ;  in  a 
word,  life  would  be  made  unendurable  to  the  girl 
who  should  presume  to  hold  herself  aloof  and 
above  the  rest  of  her  fellow-players.     Perhaps  I 


To  Act  or  not  to  Act  19 

have  been  particularly  fortunate,  but  I  have  not 
found  the  atmosphere  at  all  unpleasant  in  the 
companies  with  which  I  have  played  ;  if  there 
have  been  unpleasant  people  there  have  also  been 
pleasant  ones,  and  I  hope  that  my  manners  have 
not  suffered  by  my  theatrical  life.  As  I  have 
already  said,  the  fact  that  there  exists  this  preva- 
lent criticism  concerning  theatrical  life  is  apt  to 
make  one  rather  circumspect.  For  instance,  I  am 
sure  that  I  use  less  slang  to-day  than  I  did  before 
I  went  on  the  stage. 

' '  My  work  during  the  last  three  years  cannot 
be  called  hard  unless  during  the  three  months  of 
the  year  when  we  have  had  a  good  deal  of  travel- 
ling to  do.  I  have  often  heard  from  other  actresses 
that  until  one  has  to  face  and  endure  months  of 
playing  in  small  towns,  travelling  every  day  and 
playing  every  night  what  are  known  technically 
as  one-night-stands,  one  cannot  know  the  real 
hardships  of  this  profession.  So  some  one  else 
will  have  to  tell  you  about  that  phase  of  the  busi- 
ness. It  has  been  my  good  fortune  to  belong  to 
a  stock  company  playing  most  of  the  year  in  New 
York  City.  And  as  this  winter  we  have  had  but 
one  play,  the  amount  of  actual  study  has  been 
very  small.     My  days  have  been  practically  my 


20         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

own,  and  certainly  I  know  of  no  work  which 
would  give  me  half  the  money  I  earn  for  the  time 
I  give  to  it.  I  receive  for  my  ten  months'  work 
J2000.  This  enables  me  to  live  comfortably,  to 
pay  all  my  expenses  in  summer  during  a  long 
vacation  which  I  am  enabled  to  spend  in  my  home 
in  the  Berkshire  Hills,  and  to  put  by  several  hun- 
dred dollars.  But  better  still  than  the  money 
which  I  am  able  to  earn  by  stage  work  is  the  fact 
that  I  thoroughly  enjoy  it.  I  nev^er  get  to  the 
theatre  without  a  feeling  of  satisfaction,  and  I  can 
almost  say  that  I  never  leave  it  without  regret. 
Since  I  have  been  on  the  stage  I  have  met  several 
young  women  who  have  retired  from  it  disheart- 
ened because  their  parts  did  not  suit  them  or  be- 
cause there  was  too  much  hard  work.  All  I  can 
say  is  that  if  one  likes  the  work,  nothing  seems 
hard  about  it,  and  that  is  the  whole  test.  I  have 
known  an  actress,  an  old  friend  of  mine,  tell  me 
that  after  playing  one  play  every  night  for  nearly 
two  years  she  would  rather  go  on  acting  than  eat 
if  it  came  to  a  choice  between  the  two,  and  some 
of  her  experiences  in  the  far  West  and  South 
show  that  playing  was  no  joke.  For  instance, 
she  had  to  play  for  three  months  in  small  towns 
in  the  southwest  when  the  mercury  was  near  the 


To  Act  or  not  to  Act  21 

hundred  mark  night  and  day  ;  the  hotels  were 
caricatures  of  what  they  ought  to  have  been  ;  the 
company  had  to  travel  in  freight  cars  sometimes, 
and  the  theatres  were  of  the  cheapest  type,  and 
yet  after  such  an  experience  this  little  woman  de- 
clared that  she  loved  acting  better  than  anything 
else  in  the  world.  It  was  her  delight  in  it  that 
induced  me  to  study  for  the  stage.  To  any  girl 
who  comes  to  me  and  asks  for  advice  as  to  coming 
into  the  profession,  all  I  can  say  is  that  while 
there  are  undoubted  hardships,  especially  for 
those  who  have  to  begin  in  a  travelling  company, 
any  one  who  loves  the  work  will  find  ample  com- 
pensation. It  is  all  a  matter  of  taste ;  what  is 
meat  to  one  man  is  poison  to  another. '  * 

Miss  Georgia  Cayvan,  who  was  for  ten  years 
the  leading  woman  at  the  lyyceum  Theatre  in 
New  York,  and  who  is  certainly  entitled  to  give 
advice  upon  this  matter  to  any  young  woman, 
once  told  me  that  her  counsel  to  young  people 
who  wanted  to  act  was  that  of  Punch  to  those 
about  to  marr3^ — ''  Don't."  From  what  she  said 
I  believe,  however,  that  Miss  Cayvan' s  fears  for 
girls  who  wish  to  go  upon  the  stage  relate  chiefly 
to  physical  health  ;  she  believes  that  not  one  wo- 
man out  of  ten  can  stand  the  strain  of  acting, 


22         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

especially  when  constant  travelling  is  added  to 
the  work.  Certainly  it  requires  unflagging 
spirits,  otherwise  no  end  of  health,  to  stand  the 
hardships  of  the  travelling  player.  One  who  has 
seen  much  of  this  life  upon  the  road  says  that  she 
has  often  tramped  from  her  hotel  to  the  railway 
station  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning  with  the 
snow  a  foot  deep.  Sometimes  the  cars  would  be 
as  cold  as  an  ice-box,  at  others,  hot  to  suffocation. 
Once  this  woman  of  whom  I  speak  travelled  from 
five  o'clock  in  the  morning  until  seven  at  night 
with  nothing  but  crackers  and  water  to  eat.  At 
half-past  seven  she  arrived  in  a  town  to  play,  at 
eight,  the  light-hearted  daughter  of  a  millionaire. 

Miss  Cayvan,  in  talking  about  the  hardships 
of  stage  life,  told  me  that  once  she  played  in 
Fresno,  California,  with  the  mercury  at  115°; 
and  as  the  play  was  Bartley  Campbell's  Siberia^ 
she  had  to  wear  furs  all  the  evening. 

There  are  many  reasons  why  a  woman  may  lose 
mental  and  moral  fibre  as  well  as  physical  health 
in  stage  life  if  she  is  not  full  of  character  and  self- 
respect.  Its  associations  are  often  not  of  the  best. 
Many  of  the  girls  who  go  upon  the  stage  begin 
young,  often  without  education,  and  at  a  time 
when  their  character  is  still  unformed  ;  they  are 


To  Act  or  not  to  Act  23 

easily  led  by  flattery,  love  of  ease,  and  display  ; 
they  are  removed  from  family  influence,  to  be 
thrown  into  the  company  of  men  and  women  to 
whom  nothing  may  be  sacred.  There  are  excel- 
lent people  upon  the  stage,  but,  as  in  every  busi- 
ness, there  are  also  black  sheep,  and  under  the 
peculiar  exactions  of  stage  work  the  girl  who  goes 
into  a  theatrical  company  must  see  more  or  less 
of  every  person  in  it.  It  may  be  her  fate  to  be 
made  love  to  every  night  before  the  footlights  by 
a  man  whom  she  abhors  and  detests.  Night 
after  night  she  may  have  to  mimic  the  holiest  and 
most  sacred  emotions  before  a  crowd  of  people, 
making  sport  of  her  own  acts  and  words  when 
the  curtain  is  down,  but  doing  her  best  to  make 
them  seem  real  while  it  is  up.  It  is  not  possible 
that  this  constant  playing  with  the  emotions  does 
no  harm  in  the  long  run.  A  girl  may  keep  her 
self-respect  in  any  reputable  company.  It  will 
depend  upon  herself.  But  it  requires  tact  and 
wisdom.  She  need  not  be  called  by  her  first 
name  by  every  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  of  the  com- 
pany ;  she  need  not  share  in  the  petty  scandals 
and  squabbles  of  the  organization.  So  far  as 
morals  go,  a  woman  may  of  course  remain  un- 
tainted upon  the  stage.     It  depends  upon  herself. 


24         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

When  it  comes  to  manners,  the  best  authorities 
confess  that  the  girls  who  can  resist  the  Bohemian 
influence  of  the  stage  are  few.  No  matter  how 
refined  and  quiet  a  girl  may  be  when  she  enters 
this  feverish  life,  the  stage  will  leave  its  mark  upon 
her  in  five  cases  out  of  six.  Insensibly  she  will 
contract  some  of  the  free  and  easy  manners  of  the 
life.  The  constant  intimate  association  of  men 
and  women  on  the  stage,  the  constant  playing 
with  the  emotions,  the  mockery  of  love  which 
goes  on,  all  this  ends  by  dulling  even  the  most 
sensitive  nature. 

There  is  probably  no  profession  in  which  the 
woman  of  refinement  and  sensibility  meets  with 
greater  disappointment  than  in  stage  life.  Its 
rewards  are  great,  but  so  is  often  the  penalty. 
The  woman  will  often  find  that  notoriety  counts 
for  more  than  merit.  Theatrical  stars,  especially 
women,  are  so  frequently  the  creatures  of  circum- 
stance. Notoriety  of  one  sort  or  another,  even 
scandal,  makes  them  profitable  to  their  manager  ; 
sometimes  they  may  have  personal  beauty  of  so 
rare  a  quality  that  it  suffices  ;  again,  there  may 
be  peculiar  fitness  for  a  particular  line  of  charac- 
ter. A  trifle  may  turn  the  scale.  One  instance 
is  cited  in  which  a  young  woman  of  very  modest 


To  Act  or  not  to  Act  25 

equipment  became  prominent  because  of  an  infec- 
tious laugh  which  seemed  to  please  the  public. 
The  great  attraction  is  that  there  are  possibilities 
of  far  greater  gain  than  in  ordinary  business  life, 
and  seemingly  through  accident.  The  soubrette 
who  makes  a  hit  may  jump  from  $30  a  week  to 
|ioo.  This  is  the  will-o'-the-wisp  that  leads  a 
woman  on. 

Education  and  intelligence  are  not  sufiBcient  to 
enable  one  to  rise  in  the  dramatic  profession. 
The  fact  that  a  young  woman  feels  that  she  can 
act  must  not  be  taken  as  proof  that  she  can  do 
anything  of  the  kind.  It  is  even  held  by  some 
competent  critics  that  acting  and  intelligence 
have  but  little  in  common.  The  power  to  picture 
emotion  may  exist  without  the  appreciation  of 
that  emotion  or  the  power  to  analyze  it.  Never- 
theless success  on  the  stage  is — putting  aside  the 
question  of  great  fame  or  fortune — usually  won 
by  the  same  qualities  that  make  success  else- 
where, namely  industry,  patience,  and  sincerity. 
There  are  exceptional  temptations  to  a  girl  to 
fritter  away  her  time.  That  is  one  of  the  dangers 
of  the  profession. 

As  I  have  already  said,  some  experts  place 
health  upon  the  list  of  essentials  for  a  successful 


26         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

stage  career  in  the  highest  place.  Others  declare 
that  an  artistic  temperament — in  other  words 
sensibility,  imagination,  glow — is  even  more  im- 
portant because  sometimes  a  woman  by  no  means 
robust  may  carry  through  a  long  scene  by  sheer 
force  of  nerve  and  strength  of  will.  Good  health, 
however,  means  nervous  force  or  magnetism,  a 
species  of  animal  enthusiasm  sufficiently  pro- 
nounced to  become  contagious.  A  weakly  girl 
should  be  discouraged  from  the  stage.  It  often 
happens  that  a  theatrical  company  must  travel  all 
day  and  into  the  night  in  order  to  reach  a  town  in 
time  for  the  next  performance.  For  weeks  the 
life  will  consist  of  railroad,  hotel,  theatre  ;  rail- 
road, hotel,  theatre,  and  so  on.  On  Sunday  the 
record  will  probably  read  simply,  '*  railroad."  It 
is  hard  even  upon  a  man.  What  must  it  be  upon 
a  woman  ?  No  matter  what  her  fatigue  she  will 
be  expected  to  play  her  best.  She  may  have  to 
wear  a  low-cut  gown  with  arctic  blasts  blowing 
across  the  stage  ;  or  she  may  have  to  stifle  in 
heavy  dresses  with  the  mercury  above  ioo°. 


CHAPTER  III 

THK  SOCIAIv  STATUS  OF  THE)  STAGER 

THKRK  appeared  recently  in  an  Knglish 
magazine  of  importance  an  article  entitled 
*'  The  Social  Stigma  of  the  Stage."  Stigma  ap- 
pears to  me  to  be  entirely  too  strong  a  word  to  con- 
vey the  meaning  which  the  author  had  in  mind, 
but  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  possibility  of 
loss  in  social  position  through  connection  with  the 
stage,  unless  under  the  very  best  conditions,  can- 
not be  denied.  That  the  profession  as  a  whole  is 
to  some  extent  under  a  ban  so  far  as  the  most  re- 
spectable and  conservative  classes  are  concerned 
may  be  utterly  unjust  and  uncharitable,  but  that 
such  is  the  fact  must  not  be  ignored  if  the  matter 
is  to  be  remedied.  Mr.  Burnand  wrote  a  few 
years  ago  an  account  of  the  situation  in  England 
which  will  serve  perfectly  well  for  a  picture  of  the 
condition  of  affairs  to-day  in  this  country,  for  our 
27 


28         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

social  usages  are  grounded  upon  that  of  the 
mother  country. 

Mr.  Burnand  says  :  It  is  asserted  that  the 
professional  actor  is  far  differently  situated  now 
from  what  he  was  fifty  or  even  thirty  years  ago. 
Actor  and  actress  are,  it  is  pointed  out,  received 
everywhere,  petted,  fSted,  lionized,  and  made 
much  of  ;  our  young  men  of  birth  and  education, 
but  of  limited  purse,  take  to  the  stage  profession- 
ally as  an  honorable  means  of  earning  their  live- 
lihood just  as  the  youngest  son  of  a  good  but 
impoverished  family  used  to  be  sent  into  the 
Church  in  order  to  hold  a  family  living.  Further- 
more it  has  been  said  that  for  our  young  ladies  to 
go  on  the  stage  is  not  now  considered,  as  hereto- 
fore, a  disgrace,  but,  on  the  contrary,  rather  a 
plume  in  their  bonnets.  Altogether  it  may  be 
fairly  inferred  that  there  has  recently  been  a 
movement  theatrewards  favorable  to  the  social 
aspirations  of  the  profession  of  acting.  But  has 
it  been  anything  more  than  this  ?  Is  the  actor's 
calling  one  whit  nearer  being  recognized  as  on  a 
social  equality  with  the  regular  professions  than 
it  was  fifty  years  ago  ? 

"  A  status  in  society  means  a  certain  stand- 
ing among  one's  fellow-subjects  fixed  by  law. 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    29 

recognized  by  traditional  usage,  and  acknowledged 
by  every  one  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest.  For- 
merly it  must  be  admitted  that  as  one  of  the 
*  rogues  and  vagabonds '  by  act  of  Parliament, 
the  actor  as  actor  had  no  more  status  in  society 
than  the  professional  beggar  with  whom  he  was 
unjustly  classed.  And  even  now,  when  this  blot 
on  our  statute-book  has  been  erased,  a  respectable 
theatrical  company  travelling  in  the  Provinces  is 
described  in  the  law  courts  as  *  a  company  of 
strolling  players.'  Undoubtedly  in  a  liberal  age 
the  actor's  disabilities  have  been  removed  ;  but 
is  he  not  asking  for  what  is  an  impossibility  from 
the  very  nature  of  the  case  when  he  advances  a 
claim  for  a  recognition  of  his  calling  as  on  an 
equality  with  the  acknowledged  professions  which 
of  themselves  confer  a  certain  honorable  status  on 
their  members,  stamping  them  so  far  gentlemen  ? 
A  man  who  is  a  gentleman  by  birth  and  educa- 
tion is,  as  Mrs.  Macawber  phrases  it,  '  eligible ' 
for  the  best  society  ;  and  he  can  only  forfeit  his 
social  position  by  misconduct.  Now  one  question 
is  :  Does  going  on  the  stage  imply  forfeiture  of 
the  social  position  ?  To  consider  this  impartially 
we  must  get  entirely  away  from  I^eo  Hunter 
Associations  and  cliques  established  on  the  mutual 


30         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

admiration  principle.  The  test  cases  are  soon 
and  easily  put.  Let  us  suppose  the  case  of  the 
son  of  an  impoverished  peer.  He  cannot  a£ford 
to  be  idle.  He  has  a  liking  for  the  bar  :  he  passes 
his  examination  and  becomes  a  barrister  ;  or  he 
has  an  inclination  for  the  Church  and,  there  being 
a  family  living  vacant  and  plenty  of  interest  to 
get  him  on,  he  takes  orders.  In  either  case,  does 
he  forfeit  his  social  position  ?  Certainly  not  :  if 
anything,  he  improves  it  by  becoming  a  member 
of  an  honorable  and  dignified  profession.  Sup- 
pose he  has  money  and  prefers  soldiering  or 
sailoring  to  doing  absolutely  nothing  ;  does  he 
forfeit  his  social  position  by  becoming  an  officer  ? 
Certainly  not :  on  the  contrary,  he  improves  his 
already  good  social  status.  I  maintain  that 
prima  facie  for  a  man  to  be  an  officer,  a  barrister, 
or  a  clergyman  is  in  itself  a  passport  to  any 
English  society.  Wherever  he  is  personally  un- 
known it  is  assumed  that  he  is  a  gentleman 
until  the  contrary  is  proved;  and  this  assump- 
tion is  on  the  strength  of  his  profession  only. 
lyCt  the  rank  of  our  hypothetical  peer's  son  be 
subsequently  discovered,  and  for  that  represen- 
tative portion  of  society  which  has  entertained 
an  angel  unawares  he  has  the  recommendation 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    31 

of  his  nobility  plus  the  social  position  implied 
by  his  profession. 

*  *  But  how  if  the  son  of  our  poor  nobleman  has 
a  taste  for  theatricals  and  after  being  at  Eton  and 
Oxford  determines  on  adopting  the  stage  as  a  pro- 
fession, or,  as  it  might  be  more  correctly  put,  in 
lieu  of  a  profession.  What  will  his  noble  father 
and  his  relatives  say  to  this  step  ?  Will  they  be 
as  pleased  as  if  he  were  going  into  the  Army,  or 
to  the  Bar,  or  into  the  Church  ?  Not  exactly. 
If  he  becomes  an  officer,  a  barrister,  or  a  clergy- 
man the  event  would  be  officially  noticed  in  due 
form  ;  but  if  he  went  on  the  stage,  there  would  be 
startling  paragraphs  in  the  papers  announcing 
'  The  Son  of  an  Karl  on  the  Stage,'  '  The  Honor- 
able Mr.  So-and-So  has  adopted  the  Profession 
of  the  Stage,  etc'  Well,  and  why  not?  some 
will  exclaim  ;  and  others  will  commend  his  pluck, 
and  say,  '  Quite  right,  too.'  I  entirely  agree 
with  them.  But  the  point  is,  has  the  young 
gentleman  taken  a  step  up  the  social  ladder,  or 
has  he  gone  down  more  than  two  or  three  ?  Has 
he  improved  his  position  or  injured  it  ?  Certainly, 
as  matters  stand  there  can  be  but  one  answer— the 
step  he  has  taken  has  seriously  affected  the  posi- 
tion to  which  his  birth  and  education  entitle  him. 


32         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

*  *  As  a  barrister  on  circuit  I  have  supposed  him 
received  as  barrister  with  his  legal  brethren  ;  as 
an  officer  quartered  in  a  garrison  town  we  know 
he  will  be  received  as  officer  with  his  brother 
officers  and  no  questions  asked  ;  and  I  have 
alluded  to  the  satisfaction  that  will  be  felt  (snob- 
bery, of  course,  is  taken  for  granted  everywhere) 
when  his  rank  is  discovered.  But  as  a  player 
with  other  players  in  a  country  town,  will  he  be 
received  by  society,  it  being  understood  that  be- 
cause he  is  a  player,  therefore,  he  is  a  gentleman 
by  birth  and  education  ?  On  becoming  a  soldier 
or  a  barrister  does  any  one  change  his  name  ? 
No  ;  but  on  going  on  the  stage  it  is  the  rule  for 
any  one  to  conceal  his  identity  under  some  name 
widely  different  from  his  own,  just  as  he  conceals 
his  individuality  behind  the  footlights  with  cos- 
metics, burnt  cork,  and  an  eccentric  wig.  When 
it  is  ascertained  who  he  is  will  this  same  society, 
which  would  have  received  him  as  a  barrister,  be 
satisfied  and  delighted  ?  No  :  probably  scandal- 
ized. It  will  be  with  these  simple,  old-fashioned 
persons  a  foregone  conclusion  that  this  scion  of  a 
noble  house  must  be  a  loose  sort  of  fellow  and 
they  will  decide  that  the  less  they  see  of  him  the 
better.     There  is  one  reason  why  the  aspirant  for 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    33 

Thespian  honors  should  change  his  name,  and 
that  is  the  chance  of  failure.  If  he  goes  on  the 
stage  as  somebody  else  and  fails  as  somebody  else, 
very  few  will  hear  of  it  and  he  may  quit  the  boards 
none  the  worse  perhaps  for  the  experience  ;  but 
for  some  considerable  time,  until,  in  fact,  he  has 
lived  it  down,  he  will  be  very  careful  to  conceal 
this  episode  in  his  career  from  the  world  at  large. 
* '  Before  getting  at  the  very  essence  of  the  diffi- 
culty, I  will  ask  in  what  light  do  our  upper 
middle-class  and  upper  lower  middle-class  regard 
the  stage  as  a  means  of  earning  a  livelihood  ? 
We  must  put  out  of  the  case  entirely  all  instances 
of  genius.  An  histrionic  genius  will  be  an  actor 
and  his  success  will  justify  his  choice.  The  force 
of  his  genius  will  take  him  everywhere.  Genius 
excuses  a  multitude  of  faults  and  solecisms.  We 
must,  too,  leave  out  of  the  question  cases  of  ex- 
ceptional talent  where  there  is  more  than  an  occa- 
sional spark  of  the/eu  sacri.  Whether  histrionic 
genius  could  be  better  utilized  than  on  the  stage 
may  occur  to  some  serious  mind  with  a  decided 
anti- theatrical  bias.  But  the  histrion  for  the 
stage  and  the  stage  for  the  histrion,  and  we  must 
take  the  stage  as  it  is  for  what  it  is  and  not  for 
what  it  is  not.     Such  a  reform  of  the  stage  as 


34         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

shall  give  its  members  something  like  the  status 
they  very  properly  covet  is  a  matter  for  future 
consideration. 

*  *  Whatever  theatrical  biography  I  have  taken 
up  I  can  call  to  mind  but  very  few  instances  of  a 
man  going  on  the  stage  with  the  full  approbation 
of  his  relatives.  lyCt  his  parents  be  small  or  large 
tradesmen,  civil  servants,  clerks  in  the  city,  no 
matter  what,  they  rarely  took  kindly  to  their  son 
going  on  the  stage.  It  was  so  :  is  it  not  so  now  ? 
The  bourgeois  is  as  against  his  son  becoming  an 
actor  as  ever  he  was.  Scratch  the  British  bour- 
geois and  you  will  come  upon  a  Puritan.  Sup- 
posing a  tradesman  free  from  narrow  prejudice 
and  theatrically  inclined,  a  regular  theatre-goer 
in  fact — will  he  be  one  whit  more  favorable  to  his 
son's  becoming  an  actor  ?  No  :  rather  the  con- 
trary. He  will  not,  indeed,  regard  him  as  going 
straight  to  a  place  unmentionable,  as  probably  he 
will  not  consider  the  religious  bearings  of  the  vo- 
cation at  all,  but  he  will  not  give  the  youth  his 
blessing  and  he  may  contemplate  omitting  his 
name  from  his  will.  Supposing  this  same  son  had 
told  his  father  that  he  wanted  to  be  a  barrister, 
and  in  order  to  do  so  he  should  like  as  a  first  step 
to  serve  as  a  clerk  in  a  solicitor's  office;  would  n't 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    35 

the  old  tradesman  be  pleased  ?  Certainly.  He 
might,  indeed,  prove  to  the  lad  that  if  he  would 
stick  to  business  he  would  be  better  off  to  a  cer- 
tainty, but  all  the  same  the  youth's  aspirations 
would  give  his  parent  considerable  pleasure. 
And  to  be  brief,  here  is  a  case  which  will  bring 
the  question  directly  home  to  every  one  :  given 
equality  in  every  other  respect,  and  which  would 
be  preferred  as  a  son-in-law,  the  ordinary  actor  or 
the  briefless  barrister  ? 

**  The  question  of  the  social  status  of  the  stage 
is  still  more  important  as  affecting  ladies  who 
have  to  earn  their  livelihood.  At  the  present  day 
there  are  more  chances  of  suitable  employment 
for  educated,  respectably  connected  girls  than 
there  were  fifty  years  ago.  As  yet,  however,  the 
demand  exceeds  the  supply.  Few  occupations 
insure  to  women  such  good  pay  as  stage  playing  ; 
but  we  must  consider  the  case  of  girls  of  ordinary 
intelligence,  well  brought  up,  not  by  any  means 
geniuses,  with  no  particular  talent,  and  who  have 
to  earn  their  living.  If  they  cannot  paint  plates 
or  copy  pictures  in  oil,  if  they  object  to  any  clerkly 
drudgery  that  has  something  menial  in  it,  and  if, 
as  has  been  affirmed,  they  turn  with  a  sigh  of  re- 
lief toward  the  vista  of  the  stage,  let  us  see  what 


36         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

this  vista  has  to  offer  and  on  what  terms.  And 
to  do  this  we  had  better  take  a  glance  at  profes- 
sional, /.  e.,  theatrical  life. 

''Be  it  remembered  that  the  best  chance  for 
girls  who  seek  an  engagement  at  a  I^ondon  theatre 
is  to  travel  with  a  company  *  on  tour, '  and  so 
learn  experience  by  constant  and  frequently  vary- 
ing practice.  The  stage  is  an  art  and  not  a  pro- 
fession, and  an  art  which  as  a  means  of  obtaining 
a  bare  livelihood  is  open  to  everybody  possessing 
ordinary  faculties,  offering  employment  without 
requiring  from  applicants  any  special  qualities  or 
any  certificate  from  schoolmaster,  pastor,  or  mas- 
ter, and  therefore  it  must  be  the  resort  of  all  who 
are  unable  or  unwilling  to  do  anything  else, 
are  content  to  earn  their  few  shillings  a  week, 
and  to  be  in  the  same  category  with  Garrick, 
McCready,  Phelps,  and  Kean  ;  for  the  '  super ' 
who  earns  his  money  by  strictly  attending  to 
business  and  who  has,  night  after  night  for  a  life- 
time, no  more  than  a  few  words  to  say  is  briefly 
described  in  the  census  as  '  actor,'  as  would  be 
the  leading  tragedian  or  comedian  of  the  day. 
He  is  supernumerary,  /.  ^.,  a  supernumerary 
actor ;  and  a  supernumerary  abbreviated  to 
'  super, '  attached  to  the  theatre  he  lives  and  dies. 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    37 

In  civil  and  government  offices  there  are  super- 
numerary clerks,  and  none  the  less  clerks  on  that 
account.  If  taken  on  to  the  regular  staff  they 
cease  to  be  called  supernumeraries,  and  if  a 
*  super  '  on  the  stage  should  exhibit  decided  his- 
trionic talent  he  too  would  cease  to  be  a  '  super  ' 
and  become  an  actor,  that  is,  he  would  drop  the 
quality  of  supernumerary.  So  for  the  '  extra 
ladies, '  as  they  are  politely  termed,  who  are  femi- 
nine *  supers. '  As  a  rule  the  extra  ladies  are  as 
good  hard-working  people  as  you  will  find  any- 
where. They  have  '  come  down  '  to  this  and  in 
most  cases  consider  their  positions  as  a  descent  in 
the  social  scale,  no  matter  what  they  may  have 
been  before.  A  few  may  take  the  place  for  the 
sake  of  obtaining  *  an  appearance  '  with  a  view  to 
something  better  ;  some  as  a  means  of  honest 
livelihood  and  to  help  the  family;  and  others,  to 
whom  a  small  salary  is  not  so  much  an  object  as 
to  obtain  relief  from  the  monotony  of  evenings  at 
home,  take  to  the  stage  in  this  or  any  other  ca- 
pacity, as  *  extras  '  in  burlesque,  in  pantomime,  or 
as  strengthening  the  chorus  ;  and  to  these  the 
theatre  is  a  source  of  profitable  amusement. 

' '  These  being  some  of  the  essential  component 
parts  of  most  theatre  companies,  would  any  of  us 


38         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

wish  our  daughters  to  go  on  the  stage  ?  There 
can  be  but  one  answer  to  this  :  No  ;  certainly,  we 
would  rather  they  did  not  choose  the  stage  as  the 
means  of  earning  a  livelihood.  But  some  objector 
will  say :  *  Surely  my  daughter  need  not  associate 
with  such  persons  as  you  describe.'  I  answer, 
No  ;  she  need  not  off  the  stage,  but  how  is  she  to 
avoid  it  in  the  theatre  ?  Your  daughter,  my  dear 
sir,  is  not  all  at  once  a  Mrs.  Siddons  ;  she  is  a  be- 
ginner. Perhaps  she  never  will  be  a  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons ;  perhaps  she  will  never  get  beyond  playing 
a  soubrette  ;  or  if  she  cannot  deliver  her  lines 
well  and  has  not  the  fatal  gift  of  beauty  she  may, 
being  there  only  to  earn  her  livelihood,  be  com- 
pelled to  remain  among  the  '  extras.'  At  all 
events  she  cannot  expect  to  consort  in  the  theatre 
with  the  '  stars '  and  with  leading  ladies.  The 
manageress  may  *  know  her  at  home '  and  do 
everything  she  can  for  her ;  but  she  cannot  be 
unjust  to  others,  and  your  daughter  must  dress 
in  the  same  room  with  the  '  extras '  just  as 
lyord  Tomnoddy,  should  he  choose  to  take  the 
Queen's  shilling,  must  put  up  with  the  other 
privates  in  barracks.  The  officers  may  have 
known  him  at  home,  but  that  cannot  be  helped 
now.     Your  daughter,  my  dear  lady,  goes  on  the 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    39 

stage  in  preference  to  being  a  governess,  to  earn 
money  to  relieve  her  parents  of  a  burden  and  to 
replenish  the  family  purse.  Excellent  motive  ! 
But  can  you,  her  mother,  always  be  with  her  ? 
Can  you  accompany  her  to  rehearsals  and  be  with 
her  every  evening  in  the  dressing-room  of  the 
theatre,  where  there  are  generally  about  a  dozen 
others,  more  or  less,  according  to  the  accommoda- 
tions provided  by  the  theatre  ?  If  you  make 
your  companionship  a  sine  qua  non^  will  it  not 
prevent  managers  from  engaging  your  daughter  ? 
They  cannot  have  the  dressing-room  full  of 
mothers ;  they  cannot  spare  the  space,  and 
mothers  cannot  be  permitted  to  encumber  green- 
rooms and  the  wings.  You  may  have  implicit 
confidence  in  your  child  and  in  her  manager  and 
manageress,  but  the  latter  has  something  else  to 
do  besides  looking  after  your  daughter.  Some 
theatres,  you  will  say,  are  more  respectable  than 
others.  True ;  but  your  daughter,  having  to  earn 
her  daily  bread  by  her  profession,  cannot  select 
her  theatre.  It  is  a  hard  saying  that  beggars 
must  not  be  choosers.  Lucky  for  your  daughter 
if  she  obtains  employment  in  a  small  theatre 
where  only  comedy  is  played.  But  the  chances 
are  against  her  and  she  will  be  compelled  to  take 


40         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

the  first  engagement  that  offers  itself,  which  will 
probably  be  at  some  large  theatre  where  there  is 
employment  for  any  number  of  extra  ladies  and 
where  the  salaries  are  really  very  good  if  your 
daughter  is  only  showy  enough  to  make  herself 
an  attraction.  You  ask,  '  What  sort  of  an  attrac- 
tion ?  '  Well,  have  you  any  objection  to  her  ap- 
pearing as  a  page  in  an  extravaganza  ?  Consider 
that  any  one  who  plays  Shakespeare's  heroines, 
Viola  or  Rosalind,  must  wear  much  the  same  cos- 
tumes ;  but  the  other  ladies  who  play  pages,  and 
some  of  whom  will  be  her  companions  in  the 
dressing-room,  are  they  just  the  sort  of  girls  you 
would  like  your  daughter  to  be  with  every  even- 
ing of  her  life  ?  If  your  well-brought-up  daughter 
does  go  there,  one  of  two  things  will  happen — she 
will  be  either  so  thoroughly  disgusted  at  all  she 
hears  and  sees  that  she  will  never  go  near  the 
place  after  the  first  week,  or  she  will  uncon- 
sciously deteriorate  in  tone  until  the  fixed  lines 
of  the  moral  boundary  have  become  blurred  and 
faint.  If  among  these  surroundings  a  girl  re- 
mains pure  in  heart  it  is  simply  nothing  more 
than  a  miracle  of  grace. 

**  Would  you  like  to  expose  your  daughter  to 
this  atmosphere  ?    Of  course  not.     How  can  I 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    41 

put  the  question  ?  But  I  do  put  the  question 
after  giving  you  the  infonnation  of  the  facts  in 
the  case.  Kven  in  a  first-class  theatre  for  a 
Shakespearian  revival  there  must  be  a  number 
of  all  sorts  engaged,  and  with  them  your  daughter 
as  a  beginner  will  have  to  consort,  and  she  cannot 
have  her  mother  always  at  her  elbow.  Now  sup- 
posing a  young  lady  at  once  obtains  an  engage- 
ment at  a  reputable  theatre  and  is  cast  for  a  good 
part.  What  then  ?  Then  the  atmosphere  of  the 
theatre  at  its  best  is  not  a  pleasant  one.  Your 
daughter  will  be  astonished  at  the  extraordinary 
variations  of  manner,  from  the  abjectly  servile  to 
the  free  and  easy.  She  will  hear  everybody  *  my 
dearing '  one  another.  At  first  she  will  not 
understand  half  that  is  said,  and  very  little  that  is 
meant.  When  they  all  warm  up  to  their  work 
the  veneer  of  politeness  is  soon  rubbed  off  and  actor 
and  actress  are  seen  as  the  real  artists  they  are. 
The  stage  -  manager  comes  out  strongly  too  ; 
strange  words  are  used,  and  whether  it  be  high 
art  or  not  that  is  being  illustrated,  there  is  pretty 
sure  to  be  a  considerable  amount  of  forcible  lan- 
guage employed  in  the  excitement  of  the  moment. 
Your  daughter's  idea  of  propriety  will  be  rudely 
shocked  at  every  turn.     When  she  ceases  to  be 


42         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

even  astonished,  she  will  be  unconsciously  deteri- 
orating. For  a  young  lady  travelling  with  a 
company  would  be  simply  impossible  unless  ac- 
companied by  her  mother  or  by  some  trustworthy 
relative.  A  manageress  might  undertake  the 
guardianship  and  execute  the  trust  conscien- 
tiously, but  this  is  an  exceptional  case. 

' '  There  is  one  sort  of  girl  to  whom  all  this  does 
no  harm,  and  that  is  the  girl  who  comes  of  a 
hard-working  professional  theatrical  family,  who 
has  been  decently  brought  up  in  the  midst  of  it 
all  from  a  child,  whose  father  and  mother  are,  in 
the  theatre,  thoroughly  respectable  and  as  careful 
of  their  daughter's  morals  as  though  she  were  the 
niece  of  a  bishop.  Such  a  girl  as  this,  if  she  remain 
on  the  stage,  will  be  a  tolerable  actress,  always 
sure  of  engagements.  She  will  marry  a  decent 
respectable  actor,  or  some  one  connected  with 
theatricals  ;  will  bring  up  a  family  excellently; 
will  be  really  religious  without  ostentation;  will 
never  lose  her  self-respect  and  in  her  own  way  be 
perfectly  domestic,  happy,  and  contented  ;  or  she 
may  marry  some  one  with  a  good  social  position ;  if 
so,  she  will  quit  the  stage  without  regret  because 
she  is  not  of  the  stuff  of  which  great  actresses  are 
made ;  but  she  will  look  back  on  her  theatrical 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    43 

experience  with  affection  for  her  parents,  to  whom 
she  owed  so  much.  She  is  neither  Esther  nor 
Polly  Eccles,  nor  is  she  in  the  position  of  the 
well-brought-up  young  lady  we  have  been  con- 
sidering. 

"  There  is  another  point  and  a  very  important 
one  to  be  considered,  and  that  is  the  artistic  tem- 
perament. If  a  young  lady  of  attractive  per- 
sonality, apparently  possessing  histrionic  talent, 
takes  to  the  stage,  then  in  proportion  to  her  talent 
will  be  her  temperament.  She  will  be  impulsive, 
passionate,  impressionable,  self-willed,  impatient 
of  control,  simple,  confiding,  and  vain,  but  artis- 
tically vain  and  desirous  of  applause.  She  will 
be  illogical,  inconsistent,  full  of  contradictions, 
fond  of  variety,  and  unable  to  exist  without  ex- 
citement. It  only  requires  her  to  be  a  genius  to 
be  duped  by  the  first  schemer  who  throws  him- 
self in  her  way. 

*  *  So,  when  the  theatrical  profession  is  brought 
before  you,  my  dear  madam,  as  a  calling  for  your 
daughter  to  follow,  you  see  that  on  the  one  hand 
there  is  mediocrity  and  deterioration  of  character, 
and  on  the  other  success  at  probably  a  ruinous 
price.  This  does  not  apply,  and  I  impress  it  on 
my  readers,  to  those  who  are  to  the  manner  born  ; 


44         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

they  will  lead  dog-trot  lives,  study  their  parts, 
make  puddings,  act  mechanically  every  night, 
knit  socks  in  the  green-room,  and  be  virtuous  and 
happy  to  the  end  of  their  days.  Their  artistic 
temperament  will  not  lead  them  very  far  astray 
unless  they  have  the/eu  sacri^  and  then  it  is  likely 
they  will  make  a  hasty  marriage,  repent  at 
leisure,  and  try  to  forget  they  ever  bore  a  hus- 
band's name  by  making  one  for  themselves.  In 
some  recent  French  romance  an  ex-actress  is 
warning  her  daughter,  who  has  married  a  prince, 
against  the  fascinations  of  a  young  painter.  The 
princess  turns  on  her  mother  with  :  *  Kst-ce  ma 
faute  ^  moi  si  j'ai  dans  les  veines  du  sang  d' ar- 
tiste ?  '  (Is  it  my  fault  that  I  have  artist's  blood 
in  my  veins  ?)  And  the  ex-comedienne  feels  the 
full  force  of  her  daughter's  retort,  which  has  in  it 
a  certain  amount  of  truth.  Public  life  has  great 
dangers  for  young  women  of  the  artistic  tempera- 
ment ;  mothers  cannot  be  always  with  them  and 
sheep-dogs  are  expensive  and  untrustworthy. 
Chance  or  ill-luck  may  bring  your  daughter, 
madam,  to  the  stage,  but  you  would  not  choose  it 
for  her,  that  is,  the  stage  being  as  it  is,  and  as  it 
is  likely  to  be  under  the  present  conditions. 
When  these  conditions  are  altered  for  the  better 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    45 

it  will  be  time  enough  for  society  to  change  its 
opinions  on  the  subject. 

**  And  why,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  cannot 
the  stage  ever  rank  with  the  recognized  profes- 
sions ?  Because  as  a  means  of  earning  a  liveli- 
hood, that  is  as  a  mere  employment,  the  stage  is 
open  to  all  the  world.  Unlike  painting,  litera- 
ture, and  music,  it  requires  no  special  knowledge 
of  any  sort ;  it  can  be  practised  as  well  by  the  un- 
learned as,  though  not  with  the  same  facility,  by 
the  learned.  It  is  a  self-educating  profession. 
Physical  gifts,  up  to  a  certain  point,  will  make 
up  for  deficiency  in  talent ;  but  given  talent  and 
with  perseverance  and  application  success  is  cer- 
tain even  for  the  most  illiterate.  The  stage  re- 
quires no  matriculation  ;  but  for  an  actor  of  talent 
who  loves  his  art  there  is  no  limit  to  his  studies — 
one  helps  another,  one  leads  to  another.  A  first- 
rate  actor  should  be  an  Admirable  Crichton.  The 
best  preparation  for  the  stage  is,  as  I  have  else- 
where insisted,  a  thorough  education.  True,  that 
is  so  for  every  calling,  but  especially  for  the  stage. 
To  belong  to  the  Bar  of  England  is  an  honor  in 
itself  even  though  the  barrister  never  gets  a  brief 
and  could  do  nothing  with  it  if  he  did.  To  be- 
long to  the  stage  of  England  is  not  an  honor  of 


46         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

itself.  To  the  genius,  the  talents,  and  the  private 
work  of  our  eminent  actors  in  the  past  and  in  the 
present  our  stage  owes  its  lustre.  They  owed  noth- 
ing to  the  stage  ;  the  stage  everything  to  them. 

''  The  desire  to  raise  the  social  status  of  the 
actor  so  that  the  term  actor  shall  be  synonymous 
with  gentleman  is  worthy  of  all  praise.  To 
make  it  possible  to  young  ladies  of  education  to 
take  to  acting  as  a  means  of  earning  a  livelihood 
would  be  a  great  social  benei&t.  When  a  youth 
well  brought  up  takes  to  the  stage  he  should  not 
be  immediately  treated  as  a  pariah.  On  the  con- 
trary, if  ever  there  be  a  time  in  the  young  man's 
career  when  more  than  ever  he  stands  in  need  of 
good  home  traditions,  the  companionship  of  his 
equals,  and  the  encouragement  of  his  superiors,  it 
is  when  he  has  honestly  chosen  as  a  means  of 
earning  his  living  the  stage  as  his  profession. 
That,  for  evident  reasons,  it  has  been  usually  se- 
lected by  the  dissolute,  the  idle,  and  those  to 
whom  any  restraint  is  distasteful,  accounts  to 
great  extent  for  the  disrepute  in  which  the  stage 
has  been  held.  Of  course  the  statute-book  and 
the  Puritanism  of  the  seventeenth  century  have 
much  to  answer  for  in  the  popular  estimate  of  the 
players.     There  is  a  strong  leaven  of  Puritanism 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    47 

among  us,  and  in  some  respects  so  much  tlie  bet- 
ter ;  but  also  among  very  excellent  people  of 
various  religious  opinions  there  has  been  and 
exists  now  a  sort  of  vague  idea  that  the  stage  has 
always  been  under  the  positive  ban  of  the  Church. 
In  the  laws  and  regulations  of  different  countries 
enforced  by  narrow-minded  men,  civil  or  ecclesi- 
astical, may  be  found  the  origin  of  this  mistaken 
notion.  The  Church  has  never  pronounced  the 
stage  anathema.  In  the  time  of  I^ouis  XIII.  the 
actors  were  excellent  church-goers,  had  their  chil- 
dren baptized,  frequented  the  sacraments,  and 
were  on  the  best  terms  with  the  curis  of  Paris  ; 
and  it  will  be  a  consolation  to  those  actors  among 
us  who,  like  the  doll  in  the  song,  *  pined  for 
higher  society,'  to  be  reminded  that  the  Grand 
Monarch  himself  did  not  disdain  to  stand  god- 
father at  the  font  for  the  first-born  of  Moliere, 
and  to  do  like  oflSce  to  the  third  child  of  Bianco- 
lelli,  the  Italian  harlequin.  Our  leading  actors 
and  actresses  of  the  present  day  will  naturally 
strive,  no  less  than  those  of  the  past,  to  do  their 
best  for  the  stage,  and  in  return  the  patrons  of  the 
drama  will  do  their  best  for  them.  But  to  claim 
for  it  as  its  right  the  social  status  of  the  recog- 
nized professions  and  to  be  fussily  indignant  with 


48         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

society  at  large  for  refusing  to  acknowledge  this 
groundless  claim  is  degrading  to  an  art  which 
should  be  as  independent  and  as  exalted  as  virtue 
and  content  with  virtue's  reward." 

Upon  the  same  subject  Sir  Henry  Irving  says  : 
* '  The  stage  has  literally  lived  down  the  rebuke 
and  reproach  under  which  it  formerly  cowered, 
while  its  professors  have  been  simultaneously 
living  down  the  prejudices  which  excluded  them 
from  society.  The  stage  is  now  seen  to  be  an 
elevating  instead  of  a  lowering  influence  on  na- 
tional morality,  and  actors  and  actresses  receive 
in  society,  as  do  the  members  of  other  professions, 
exactly  the  treatment  which  is  earned  by  their 
personal  conduct.  And  so  I  would  say  of  what 
we  sometimes  hear  so  much  about,  dramatic  re- 
form— it  is  not  needed,  or,  if  it  is,  all  the  reform 
that  is  wanted  will  be  best  effected  by  the  opera- 
tion of  public  opinion  upon  the  administration  of 
a  good  theatre.  The  dramatic  reformers  are  very 
well-meaning  people.  They  show  great  enthusi- 
asm, are  new  converts  to  the  theatre,  most  of 
them,  and  they  have  the  zeal  of  converts  ;  but  it 
is  scarcely  according  to  knowledge.  These  ladies 
and  gentlemen  have  scarcely  studied  the  condi- 
tions of  the  enterprise  which  must  be  carried  on 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    49 

as  a  business  or  it  will  fail  as  an  art.  It  is  an 
unwelcome  if  not  an  unwarrantable  intrusion  to 
come  among  our  people  with  elaborate  advice 
and  endeavor  to  make  them  live  after  different 
fashions  from  those  which  are  suitable  to  them, 
and  it  will  be  quite  hopeless  to  attempt  to  induce 
the  general  body  of  a  purely  artistic  class  to  make 
louder  and  more  fussy  professions  of  virtue  and 
religion  than  other  people. ' ' 

Miss  Mitchell  says  :  **  The  faults  to  be  avoided 
by  the  young  actress  are,  so  far  as  her  private 
life  is  concerned,  those  that  should  be  avoided  by 
any  other  young  woman.  In  her  profession  she 
should  try  to  avoid  envy  and  jealousy;  she  should 
apply  all  her  energies  to  acquiring  technical  edu- 
cation by  experience,  and  she  should  not  be  frivo- 
lous or  careless.  She  should  in  public  attempt 
with  all  her  might  to  be  as  other  young  women  are. 
One  of  the  saddest  features  of  my  profession  is  its 
tendency  to  confuse  the  minds  of  young  beginners 
with  regard  to  what  they  ought  and  what  they 
ought  not  to  do  outside  of  the  theatre.  I  have 
seen  innocent  but  foolish  young  girls  announce 
by  their  dress  and  their  behavior  in  public  ve- 
hicles that  they  were  *  professionals.'  Without 
being  conscious  of  so  offending  against  themselves 


50         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

and  their  art,  they  exhibit  such  incongruities  and 
such  loud  taste  in  their  attire,  such  demonstra- 
tiveness  and  such  indifference  to  censorious  ob- 
servation in  their  manners,  that  I  have  over  and 
over  again  been  both  pained  and  ashamed.  The 
greatest  and  most  dangerous  fault  that  a  beginner 
can  commit  is  to  ignore  the  fact  that  she  ought  to 
be  a  lady  always — an  actress  only  during  the  per- 
formance of  her  part. 

*'  The  morals  of  actresses  are  very  much  like 
the  morals  of  other  people.  *  Society,'  as  it  calls 
itself,  is  pretty  accurately  reflected  by  the  stage. 
My  sisters  of  the  profession  are  neither  better  nor 
worse  th  an  my  sisters  of  the  world  outside.  They 
labor  under  a  double  disadvantage.  They  are 
not  only  subjected  to  severer  temptations  (both 
positive  and  negative)  than  most  other  women, 
but  in  the  fierce  light  which  beats  upon  them 
their  mere  weaknesses  may  be  magnified  into 
flagrant  immorality." 

Writing  upon  the  same  subject  Mrs.  Navarro 
(Mary  Anderson)  says  :  **  Not  so  many  years  ago 
social  laws  proscribed  the  followers  of  the  theatri- 
cal calling  in  the  most  offensive  and  contemptuous 
terms.  Described  in  the  old  English  statutes  as 
vagabonds,  *  such  as  wait  on  the  night  and  sleep 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    51 

on  the  day,  and  hunt  taverns  and  ale-houses  and 
routs  about  and  no  man  wots  from  whence  they 
came  nor  whither  they  go,'  the  dramatic  artist  of 
to-day  finds  every  door  open  and  every  hand 
stretched  out  in  welcome.  What  are  the  causes 
of  this  lifting  up  of  the  theatre  and  its  followers  ? 
Are  they  to  be  discovered  in  the  devotion  of 
players  to  the  development  and  dignity  of  their 
art  or  in  the  suppositious  exaltation  of  the  stage 
by  social  personages  who  have  persuaded  them- 
selves that  in  becoming  associated  with  the  drama 
they  are  assisting  in  its  elevation.  I  think  that 
any  serious  consideration  of  this  advancement  of 
the  profession  of  acting  must  bring  the  conclusion 
that  it  has  been  occasioned  purely  by  the  care  and 
thought  and  increasing  power  of  the  actors  them- 
selves. No  barrier  can  stand  forever  before  the 
progress  of  honest  endeavor.  It  is  only  by  the 
constant  toil  which  produces  development  that 
any  of  the  arts  has  gone  forward,  and  this  applies 
with  particular  force  to  the  dramatic  art,  which, 
being  a  combination  of  all  the  others,  is  the  most 
difficult  and  comprehensive.  It  would  be  a  de- 
structive blow  to  the  existence  of  such  a  thing  as 
dramatic  art  if  a  social  leader  equipped  with 
pleasing  personality,  a  degree  of  drawing-room 


52         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

grace,  and  ten  lessons  in  elocution  were  to  gain 
the  approval  of  thoughtful  observers  as  an  actress. 
I  do  not  say  that  a  social  leader  maj^not  become 
a  dramatic  artist.  But  her  progress  must  be  ac- 
companied by  the  same  methods  and  labors  and 
experiences  as  those  which  mark  the  advancement 
of  the  humblest  beginner  in  the  ranks. ' ' 

Mrs.  lyynn  I^inton,  the  Knglish  writer,  believed 
that  the  stage  could  be  made  an  admirable  em- 
ployment for  women  and  that  this  will  be  done 
before  many  years  are  over.  She  says  :  "  As  for 
actresses  themselves,  they  can  be  what  they  will, 
if  they  choose  to  be  earnest  workers  ;  respectable 
women  and  ambitious  only  of  a  deserved  and 
legitimate  professional  success,  they  have  the  key 
of  the  situation  in  their  own  hands  and  all  this  is 
open  to  them.  The  question  of  education  lies  at 
the  base  of  their  position.  It  is  the  root  of  the 
flower,  and  the  flower  is  as  the  root  makes  it. 
Women  who  have  a  true  vocation  for  anything 
educate  themselves  up  to  the  highest  of  which 
they  are  capable — in  acting  as  in  everything  else. 
But  the  mischief  is  that  almost  every  woman  with 
a  grain  of  imagination  thinks  she  can  act  without 
study  and  preparation,  as  almost  every  one  who 
knows  how  to  spell  thinks  she  can  write  books. 


The  Social  Status  of  the  Stage    53 

A  little  command  of  feature,  a  little  power  of 
mimicry  and  power  of  representation,  memory 
enough  to  repeat  her  lines  without  stumbling, 
grace  enough  to  manage  her  train  without  trip- 
ping, and  behold  our  ordinary  young  woman  quite 
convinced  that  she  can  act.  No  plodding,  earnest, 
anxious  study  for  such  an  histrionic  butterfly  as 
this  !  No  careful  searching  into  the  author's 
deeper  meaning  ;  no  artistic  taking  the  plays  as 
a  whole  with  due  regard  to  light  and  shade,  to 
proportion  and  situation  ;  nothing  but  the  cheap 
and  easy  gratifying  of  vanity  and  egotism  in  the 
display  of  her  pretty  person  and  the  centralization 
of  interest  on  herself.  Royal  roads  do  not  exist 
anywhere,  and  no  actress  is  worth  her  salt  who 
does  not  work  hard  and  study  deeply,  nor  to 
whom  her  profession  has  not  in  it  that  element 
of  seriousness — of  almost  religious  fervor — which 
is  the  inseparable  companion  of  sincerity  and  the 
sign  of  a  true  vocation. 

*  *  The  stage  may  be  as  vile  and  corrupt  as  its 
detractors  say  it  is,  but  it  need  not  be  so  ;  and  it 
is  hard  to  believe  that  it  is  as  they  say.  It  might 
be  made  a  profession  fit  for  the  noblest  woman  to 
undertake  and  for  the  most  modest  girl  to  fol- 
low without  hurt  or  damage.     It    depends  on 


54         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

themselves.  But  it  is  always  the  same  difficulty. 
Who  is  to  begin  ?  Who  will  bell  the  cat  of  preju- 
dice and  prove  that  to  be  an  actress,  even  not  of 
the  first  strength,  is  not  necessarily  to  be  virtually 
a  divergondie  f  and  that  a  profession  which  an- 
swers to  the  artistic  needs  of  some  natures  and  is 
a  source  of  profit  as  well  as  pleasure  need  not 
therefore  unfit  a  girl  for  the  society  of  the  pure 
and  the  respect  of  the  honorable  ?  No  one  denies 
all  this  for  the  exceptions  in  the  first  rank  ;  but 
what  we  plead  for  is  the  inclusion  of  the  little 
people  of  the  green-room.  The  actors  of  the 
second  rank,  the  girls  who  have  to  make  their 
own  living  but  who  cannot  be  governesses  and 
are  of  a  higher  social  rank  than  shop-girls  ;  and 
those  who,  of  a  yet  higher  rank  and  artists  to 
their  finger-tips,  are  neither  musicians  nor  painters 
nor  yet  romance  writers.  For  these  two  classes 
the  stage  made  possible  would  be  a  very  godsend 
in  the  way  of  work  and  emolument ;  there  is  no 
intrinsic  reason  why  it  should  not  be  ;  and  we 
believe  it  will  be  if  only  the  women  themselves 
will  take  it  in  hand." 


chapte;r  IV 


THE  STAGE  AS  AN  ARTISTIC  CAREER 


CONCERNING  the  importance  and  influence 
of  the  dramatic  art  upon  society  and  its 
value  to  the  community,  Mr.  Lawrence  Barrett 
once  said :  ''  The  absolute  influence  of  the 
dramatic  art  to-day  is  greater  than  it  ever  was, 
and  it  seems  sometimes  as  if  it  were  the  only  real 
influence  at  work  in  art  in  the  world.  This  is 
true  not  only  of  America  but  of  Kurope — almost 
more  true  of  Europe  than  of  America.  For  this 
very  reason  the  actor's  calling  is  higher  and  de- 
mands greater  labor  and  sacrifice  on  his  part.  It 
calls  for  a  better  equipment,  and  he  who  does  not 
rise  to  the  necessity  of  greater  industry  will  find 
himself  distanced  very  early  in  the  race.  The 
actor  who  does  not  realize  the  greatness  of  his 
calling,  the  high  estimate  which  wise  men  are 
placing  upon  it  and  the  warm  interest  which  all 
55 


5^         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

moralists  and  scholars  are  taking  in  it  and  does 
not  govern  himself  thereby — keeping  his  own 
standard  at  least  as  high  as  the  world's  estimate 
of  him,  living  an  industrious,  studious,  clean  life 
— is  unfaithful  to  the  trust  which  has  been  placed 
in  his  hands." 

Talking  upon  the  same  subject  before  an  audi- 
ence of  students,  Sir  Henry  Irving  recently  said  : 
' '  To  boast  of  being  able  to  appreciate  Shakespeare 
more  in  reading  him  than  in  seeing  him  acted 
used  to  be  a  common  method  of  affecting  special 
intellectuality.  I  hope  this  delusion — a  gross 
and  pitiful  one  as  to  most  of  us — has  almost  abso- 
lutely died  out.  But  what  did  it  amount  to  ?  It 
was  little  more  than  a  conceited  and  feather- 
headed  assumption  that  an  unprepared  reader, 
whose  mind  is  usually  full  of  far  other  things, 
will  see  on  the  instant  all  that  has  been  developed 
in  hundreds  of  years  by  members  of  a  studious  and 
enthusiastic  profession.  My  own  conviction  is 
that  there  are  no  characters  or  passages  of  our 
great  dramatist  which  will  not  repay  original 
study.  But  at  least  we  must  recognize  these  vast 
advantages  with  which  a  practised  actor,  impreg- 
nated by  the  associations  of  his  life  and  by  study 
— with  all  the  practice  and  critical  skill  of  his 


The  Stage  as  an  Artistic  Career    57 

profession  up  to  the  date  at  which  he  appears, 
whether  he  adopts  or  rejects  tradition — addresses 
himself  to  the  interpretation  of  any  great  charac- 
ter, even  if  he  have  no  originality  whatever. 
There  is  something  still  more  than  this,  however, 
in  acting.  Kvery  one  who  has  the  smallest  his- 
trionic gift  has  a  natural  dramatic  fertility  ;  so 
that  as  soon  as  he  knows  the  author's  text  and 
obtains  self-possession  and  feels  at  home  in  a  part 
without  being  too  familiar  with  it,  the  mere  auto- 
matic action  of  rehearsing  and  playing  it  at  once 
begins  to  place  the  author  in  new  lights  and  to 
give  the  personage  being  played  an  individuality 
partly  independent  of,  and  yet  consistent  with  and 
rendering  more  powerfully  visible,  the  dramatist's 
conception.  It  is  the  vast  power  a  good  actor  has 
in  this  way  which  has  led  the  French  to  speak 
of  '  creating '  a  part  when  they  mean  its  being 
first  played ;  and  French  authors  are  so  conscious 
of  the  extent  and  value  of  this  co-operation  of 
actors  with  them  that  they  have  never  objected 
to  the  phrase,  but  on  the  contrary  are  uniformly 
lavish  in  their  homage  to  the  artists  who  have 
created  on  the  boards  the  parts  which  they  them- 
selves have  created  on  paper. 

**  I  must  add  as  an  additional  reason  for  valuing 


58         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

the  theatre  that  while  there  is  only  one  Shake- 
speare and  while  there  are  comparatively  few 
dramatists  who  are  sufficiently  classic  to  be 
read  with  close  attention,  there  is  a  great  deal  of 
average  dramatic  work  excellentl}'-  suited  for 
representation.  From  this  the  public  will  derive 
pleasure.  From  this  they  receive— as  from  fiction 
in  literature — a  great  deal  of  instruction  and  a 
mental  stimulus.  Some  may  be  worldly,  some 
social,  some  cynical,  some  merely  humorous  and 
witty,  but  a  great  deal  of  it,  though  its  literary 
merit  is  secondary,  is  well  qualified  to  bring  out 
all  that  is  most  fruitful  and  good  in  common 
sympathies. 

**  As  respects  the  other  feeling  which  used  to 
stand  more  than  it  does  now  in  the  way  of  the 
theatre — the  fear  of  moral  contamination — it  is 
due  to  the  theatre  of  our  day  on  the  one  hand  and 
to  the  prejudices  of  our  grandfathers  on  the  other, 
to  confess  that  the  theatre  of  fifty  years  ago,  or 
less,  did  need  reforming — in  the  audience  part  of 
the  house.  All  who  have  read  the  old  contro- 
versies as  to  the  morality  of  going  to  the  theatre 
are  familiar  with  the  objections  to  which  I  refer. 
But  the  theatre  of  fifty  years  ago  or  less  was  re- 
formed.    If  there  are  any,  therefore,  as  I  fear 


The  Stage  as  an  Artistic  Career    59 

there  are  a  few,  who  still  talk  on  this  point  in  the 
old  vein,  let  them  rub  their  eyes  a  bit  and  do  us 
the  justice  to  consider  not  what  used  to  be  but 
what  is.  But  may  there  be  moral  contamination 
from  what  is  performed  on  the  stage  ?  Well, 
there  may  be,  but  so  there  is  from  books.  So 
there  may  be  at  lawn-tennis  clubs.  So  there  may 
be  at  dances.  So  there  may  be  in  connection  with 
everything  in  civilized  life  and  society.  But  do 
we  therefore  bury  ourselves  ?  The  anchorites 
secluded  themselves  in  hermitages.  The  Puritans 
isolated  themselves  in  consistent  abstention  from 
anything  that  anybody  else  did.  And  there  are 
people  now  who  think  that  they  can  keep  their 
children  and  that  those  children  will  keep  them- 
selves in  after-life  in  cotton- wool  so  as  to  avoid  all 
temptations  of  body  and  mind  and  be  saved  nine- 
tenths  of  the  responsibility  of  self-control.  You 
must  be  in  the  world,  though  you  may  not  be  of 
it ;  and  the  best  way  to  make  the  world  a  better 
community  to  be  in,  and  not  so  bad  a  place  to  be 
of,  is  not  to  shun  but  to  bring  public  opinion  to 
bear  upon  its  pursuits  and  its  relaxations.  De- 
pend upon  two  things — that  the  theatre  as  a  whole 
is  never  below  the  average  moral  sense  of  the 
time  ;   and  that  the  inevitable  demand  for  an 


6o         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

admixture  at  least  of  wholesome  sentiment  in  every 
sort  of  dramatic  product  brings  the  ruling  tone 
of  the  theatre,  whatever  drawbacks  may  exist,  up 
to  the  highest  level  at  which  the  general  morality 
of  the  time  can  truly  be  registered. 

' '  We  may  be  encouraged  by  the  reflection  that 
this  is  truer  than  ever  it  was  before  owing  to  the 
greater  spread  of  education,  the  increased  com- 
munity of  taste  between  classes  and  the  almost 
absolute  divorce  of  the  stage  from  mere  wealth 
and  aristocracy. 

' '  Wealth  and  aristocracy  come  around  the  stage 
in  abundance  and  are  welcome,  as  in  the  time  of 
Elizabeth  ;  but  the  stage  is  no  longer  a  mere  ap- 
pendage of  court  life,  no  longer  a  mere  mirror  of 
patrician  vice  hanging  at  the  girdle  of  fashionable 
profligacy,  as  it  was  in  the  days  of  Congreve  and 
Wycherly.  It  is  now  the  property  of  educated 
people.  It  has  to  satisfy  them,  or  pine  in  neglect. 
And  the  better  their  demands  the  better  will  be 
the  support  with  which  the  drama  will  respond. 
This  being  not  only  so,  but  seen  to  be  so,  the  stage 
is  no  longer  proscribed.  It  is  no  longer  under  a 
ban.    Its  members  are  no  longer  pariahs  in  society. 

' '  Welcome  be  the  return  of  good  sense,  good 
taste  and  charity,  or  rather  justice.     No  apology 


The  Stage  as  an  Artistic  Career    6i 

for  the  stage.  None  is  needed.  It  has  but  to  be 
named  to  be  honored.  Too  long  the  world  talked 
with  bated  breath  and  whispering  humbleness  of 
*  the  poor  player.'  There  are  now  few  poor 
players.  Whatever  variety  of  fortune  and  merit 
there  may  be  among  them,  they  have  the  same 
degree  of  prosperity  and  respect  as  come  to  mem- 
bers of  other  vocations.  There  never  was  so  large 
a  number  of  theatres  or  of  actors.  And  their  type 
is  vastly  improved  by  public  recognition.  The 
old  days  when  good-for-nothings  passed  into  the 
profession  are  at  an  end  ;  and  the  old  Bohemian 
habits,  so  far  as  they  were  evil  and  disreputable, 
have  also  disappeared.  The  ranks  of  the  art  are 
being  continually  recruited  by  deeply  interested 
and  earnest  young  men  of  good  education  and 
belongings." 

Mr.  William  Winter,  in 'writing  upon  the  im- 
portance and  influence  of  the  stage  to-day,  says  in 
the  course  of  a  most  valuable  article  in  the  North 
American  Review :  "  The  worst  influence  that  I 
know  of  as  proceeding  from  the  stage  is  one  that 
also  proceeds  from  the  pulpit  and  perhaps  from  all 
artistic  pursuits — the  possible  weakening  of  char- 
acter from  encouragement  of  the  love  of  admira- 
tion in  persons  who  are  before  the  public  whether 


62         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

as  actors,  orators,  writers,  preachers,  or  personal 
exhibitors  of  any  kind.  It  takes  a  long  time  for 
a  man  to  learn  the  usual  vagueness,  the  frequent 
ignorance,  the  heedless  flippancy,  and  therefore 
the  general  worthlessness  of  the  opinions  and  re- 
marks of  most  other  people  about  himself  or  his 
proceedings — to  learn  that  the  only  rational  way 
to  live  is  to  make  duty  a  rigid  law  of  life  and 
utterly  to  ignore  what  people  say.  Many  men 
never  learn  this  and  actors  in  particular,  whose 
fortunes  depend  so  immediately  on  popular  liking, 
are  sometimes  pitiable  in  their  restless,  craving 
vanity.  The  same  thing  is  seen  in  some  clergy- 
men. To  my  mind,  at  least  two- thirds  of  all  that 
occurs  in  the  world,  whether  on  the  stage  or  else- 
where, is  of  no  public  importance  at  all,  and  ought 
never  to  be  noticed  in  any  way.  We  should  see 
fewer  cases  of  vanity  and  hear  less  of  nobodies 
and  nothings  if  society  and  the  press  had  not  such 
an  inveterate  disposition  to  '  chronicle  small 
beer. ' 

* '  The  principal  fault  of  the  stage  of  the  present 
time  in  America  is  frivolity,  and  this  comes  from 
the  frivolity  of  the  public  and  the  press.  Acting 
is  a  learned  profession.  The  stage  should  be  de- 
voted to  good  plays  well  acted,  and  to  nothing 


The  Stage  as  an  Artistic  Career    63 

else.  I  do  not  think  that  the  position  of  acting 
as  a  learned  profession,  or  the  utility  of  the  stage 
as  an  intellectual  force,  is  properly  appreciated  at 
this  time.  The  public  is  far  too  easily  pleased. 
Many  silly  things  are  accepted.  Many  common- 
place persons  are  admired  and  commended.  The 
newspapers,  almost  without  exception,  sedulously 
record  as  matters  of  importance  the  theatrical 
doings  of  individuals  who  yesterday  were  grocers' 
clerks  or  milliners'  apprentices.  Any  person 
who  can  buy  three-sheet-posters  and  lithograph 
pictures  can  usually  obtain  prominent  notice  as 
an  actor  in  almost  every  newspaper  in  the  United 
States  ;  not  by  purchase,  but  as  a  matter  of  what 
is  called  news.  All  this  is  out  of  proportion. 
Such  a  state  of  things  tends  to  lower  the  value  of 
critical  recognition,  cheapen  the  rewards  of  effort 
in  dramatic  art,  and  bring  serious  and  splendid 
endeavor  and  high  ambition  into  contempt.  The 
world  does  not  advance  in  wisdom,  virtue,  and 
happiness  by  denial  and  destruction.  All  insti- 
tutions should  be  bent  to  the  good  of  all  mankind. 
It  was  John  Wesley,  a  clergyman,  who  said  that 
the  devil  should  not  have  all  the  good  music. 
Must  we  destroy  the  stage  because  a  milk- sop 
may  chance  to  be  injured  by  it  ?    Is  all  life  to  be 


64         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

squared  to  the  tastes  and  needs  of  simpletons  ? 
The  thing  to  be  desired  is  gravity  and  thorough- 
ness in  American  character,  more  scholarship, 
habits  of  study,  the  rare  and  noble  habit  of  think- 
ing, in  which  so  few  persons  ever  indulge.  As 
the  ideals  of  intellectual  effort  rise  higher  and 
higher  in  the  community,  the  sincere  workers 
upon  the  stage  as  in  every  other  department  of 
art  will  be  encouraged  and  strengthened  and  the 
stage  itself  will  be  ennobled." 

Mrs.  Navarro  (Mary  Anderson)  says  :  '*  It  is  a 
great  part  of  our  mission  to  seek  out  the  utmost 
dramatic  possibilities  of  compositions  that  have 
been  framed  for  the  stage  and  bring  them  to  the 
light.  We  can  hardly  expect  to  accomplish  this 
task  with  success  until  we  have  by  long  study 
and  experience  trained  our  natural  qualities  to  a 
knowledge  of  what  dramatic  effects  really  are  and 
a  power  to  bring  them  out.  Let  me  choose  for 
an  example  The  Wiiitef  s  Tale.  When  I  was 
preparing  for  its  presentation  in  I^ondon  many 
close  readers  of  Shakespeare  were  more  than 
doubtful  of  the  result.  Professor  Max  Miiller 
said  to  me  one  day  :  '  I  do  not  see  what  can  be 
made  of  this  work.  Viewed  from  a  dramatic 
standpoint,    I   regard    it  as  not  only  the  least 


The  Stage  as  an  Artistic  Career    65 

valuable  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  but  as  being 
almost  wholly  worthless.' 

'*  '  You  must  go  and  see  it,'  I  replied. 

"  *  I  shall  do  so,'  he  continued,  '  and  if  you  can 
convince  me  that  The  Winter's  Tale  is  worth  the 
labor  and  expense  you  are  bestowing  upon  it  I 
shall  admit  that  I  was  completely  in  error. ' 

'*  He  did  see  the  production  and  he  very 
heartily  admitted  that  he  had  been  completely 
deceived  as  to  its  value  for  dramatic  purposes. 
Thus  I  hold  that  the  dramatic  artist,  b)^  the  sus- 
tained and  tireless  exercise  of  his  or  her  art,  may 
prove  of  great  assistance  to  the  student  who, 
without  knowledge  of  the  stage,  must  frequently 
lose  sight  of  the  best  qualities  of  dramatic 
poetry. 

'*  An  instance  illustrating  the  power  of  the 
dramatic  artist  to  suggest  and  bring  out  the 
meanings  of  the  author,  where  they  have  not  been 
apparent  to  the  reader  or  student,  was  made 
known  in  the  Mounet-Sully  production  of  Hamlet 
at  the  Theatre  Fran^ais.  It  was  the  most  wonder- 
ful production  of  Shakespeare  ever  known,  not 
merely  from  the  standpoint  of  splendor  and  out- 
lay, but  as  viewed  from  the  point  of  realistic  sug- 
gestiveness.     All  Paris  went  to  see  it  and  a  great 


66         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

many  people  made  the  journey  from  lyondon  for 
the  express  purpose  of  witnessing  the  revival.  I 
confess  to  having  followed  it  with  eager  interest 
no  less  than  eight  times.  Reference  to  a  simple 
event  in  the  representation  will  confer  an  idea  of 
the  remarkable  skill  shown  in  conveying  the  illu- 
sion intended  by  the  author.  The  curtain  went 
up  on  a  scene  in  which  there  was  an  atmospheric 
effect  so  skilfully  devised  as  to  suggest  most 
vividly  the  blue-cold  of  a  winter  night  in  Den- 
mark. For  some  moments  there  was  silence  on 
the  stage,  which  was  deserted.  Then  there  was 
heard  in  the  distance  the  clanking  sound  of  a  man 
in  armor.  The  sound  appeared  nearer  and  nearer 
and  then  a  guard  appeared  upon  the  scene,  beat- 
ing his  hands  and  blowing  his  warm  breath  upon 
his  fingers  in  an  apparent  endeavor  to  restore  his 
circulation.  He  crossed  the  stage  without  a  word 
and  disappeared.  He  could  be  heard  receding  in 
the  distance  and  finally  came  in  sight  again  at  the 
back  of  the  stage.  All  this  was  done  before  a 
word  was  spoken,  and  was  intended  to  show  just 
what  kind  of  night  it  was.  In  this  the  action  was 
extremely  successful.  It  brought  out  pictorially 
the  poet's  briefly  described  conditions  surround- 
ing the  opening  of  his  play.     There  might  be 


The  Stage  as  an  Artistic  Career    67 

recalled  a  number  of  similar  effects  which  were 
brought  out  in  this  same  representation,  but  this 
single  incident  will  serve  to  show  the  value  of  the 
dramatic  artist's  insight  as  a  help  to  making  clear 
the  author's  meaning." 


CHAPTKR  V 


QUAI<IFICATI0NS  FOR  STAGK  SUCCl^SS 


WHETHER  a  young  man  or  woman  should 
attempt  a  stage  career  depends  upon 
many  things.  The  list  of  desirable  qualifications 
is  an  almost  endless  one.  I^et  me  give  the  expert 
opinions  of  some  actors  and  actresses  who  have 
made  their  mark  in  the  profession.  John  McCul- 
lough  wrote  :  *  *  To  undertake  to  say  what  are  all 
the  requisites  to  success  as  a  tragedian  would  be 
rash  for  any  one  individual — certainly  for  me. 
Success  itself  may  be  variously  estimated  ;  but 
assuming  the  success  meant  to  be  artistic,  it 
should  not  be  difficult  to  indicate  some  of  its  con- 
ditions. Among  these,  health  and  fair  personal 
appearance,  flexibility  of  feature  and  grace  of 
movement  are  in  a  high  degree  desirous  and  are 
susceptible  of  being  to  some  degree  acquired  and 
cultivated.  Beyond  these  there  must  be  strong 
08 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    69 

intelligence  and  the  capacity  to  learn.  It  need 
not  necessarily  be  a  quick  intelligence,  but  it  must 
have  the  power  to  grasp  and  hold  the  meaning  of 
the  writers  of  great  plays.  Doubtless  these  are 
things  that  anybody  could  say,  but  nevertheless 
they  lie  at  the  bottom  of  the  art  and  they  must  be 
stated.  But  given  these,  two  things  further  are 
imperatively  essential ;  first,  what  may  be  summed 
up  in  one  word  :  heart — a  capacity  to  feel  lofty 
emotions  and  to  make  others  feel  them  ;  and 
second,  industry.  It  is  difficult  to  state  in  terms 
what  is  meant  by  the  word  '  heart.'  It  is  doubt- 
less the  same  that  some  mean  when  they  say 
genius,  and  others  when  they  say  magnetism. 
There  are  those  who  can  feel  all  the  emotions  of 
great  dramatic  characters  but  lack  the  capacity 
of  translating  them  to  others  ;  and  those  who 
with  all  physical  and  mental  requirements  for 
such  translation  are  always  cold  and  unaffecting 
as  artists  because  they  cannot  comprehend  emo- 
tionally as  well  as  intellectually.  If  it  be  asked 
how  one  is  to  know  whether  this  gift  is  possessed 
or  not,  the  answer  must  be  that  the  only  possible 
evidence  in  advance  of  trial  is  purely  internal. 
If  it  exists,  its  possessor  can  scarcely  be  wholly 
unconscious  of  the  fact,  though  he  may  never  put 


7o         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

it  into  practical  exercise.  If  it  is  not  born  with 
a  man,  it  can  never  be  acquired.  This,  then, 
may  be  held  to  be  the  final  attribute  :  the  posses- 
sion by  right  of  birth  more  or  less — and  the  more 
the  better — of  this  magnetism,  genius,  dramatic 
instinct,  capacity  to  feel  and  to  make  others  feel, 
call  it  what  you  will.  It  is  indescribable  in  words 
but  it  is  not  unrecognizable. 

*'  But  added  to  this  there  must  be  that  second 
requisite  of  equal  necessity  if  not  of  equal  dignity 
— untiring  industry.  The  young  man  who  ex- 
pects to  find  a  royal  road  to  eminence  in  the  dra- 
matic profession,  who  expects  to  get  on  without 
unremitting  labor,  patient  study,  and,  so  far  as 
the  frivolities  and  dissipations  of  life  and  society 
go,  unrelenting  self-denial,  will  inevitably  be 
bitterly  disappointed.  There  are  no  exceptions 
to  this  iron  rule.  There  is  not  an  eminent  actor 
on  the  stage  who  cannot  look  back  to  years  when 
the  hours  which  to  many  of  his  companions  were 
hours  of  leisure  or  jollity  were  to  him  hours  of 
hard,  patient,  often  apparently  fruitless,  study. 
Probably  every  one  of  them  can  also  recall  com- 
panions who  started  in  the  race  with  every  ad- 
vantage of  health,  strength,  voice,  manly  beauty, 
intelligence  and  dramatic  instinct  who  have  long 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    71 

been  distanced  solely  from  a  lack  of  this  capacity 
for  patient  industry.  The  stage  is  full  to-day  of 
men  of  fair  intelligence  who  cannot  or  at  least  do 
not  succeed  even  in  small  parts,  because  they  do 
not  bend  all  the  energy  of  an  earnest  purpose  to 
understanding  the  meaning  of  the  lines  they 
speak.  It  is  a  grievous  mistake  to  think  the 
artist's  life  an  easy  one, — eminence  aside  ;  and  it 
is  a  far  more  grievous  mistake  to  fancy  that  the 
grace  and  beauty  of  Apollo  and  the  genius  of 
Roscius — all  the  divine  gifts  that  could  be  con- 
centrated in  one  man — can  win  histrionic  great- 
ness without  hard,  close,  painful  work." 

Madame  Modjeska  says  :  *'  The  actor,  like  the 
poet  or  the  painter,  must  be  born  with  a  certain 
amount  of  native  talent  which  if  neglected  may 
disappear,  but  if  cultivated  thoroughly  and  rightly 
will  produce  the  desired  results.  I  believe,  how- 
ever, that  a  person  who  is  deprived  of  these 
natural  gifts  and  who  possesses  an  average  amount 
of  intelligence  can,  by  careful  and  judicious  train- 
ing, acquire  a  certain  amount  of  technical  knowl- 
edge or  what  I  would  call  the  handicraft  of  the 
profession  so  as  to  fill  respectably  minor  parts  on 
the  stage  and  not  be  out  of  place  in  what  is  called 
a  good  ensemble.  But  I  cannot  believe  that  a  person 


72  The  Stage  as  a  Career 

not  possessing  these  natural  gifts  has  ever  acquired 
by  study  the  creative  power  which  is  the  distinc- 
tive mark  of  a  true  artist.  With  the  actor  creative 
power  implies  the  faculty  of  building  up  the  char- 
acter true  to  nature  and  endowing  it  with  life  so 
as  to  produce  the  illusion  that  his  personation  is 
not  a  fiction  but  a  reality.  True,  we  have  in  the 
annals  of  the  stage  quite  a  number  of  instances 
of  actors  being  unpromising  at  first  and  even  be- 
coming eminent.  This  does  not  prove  that  they 
did  not  possess  the  necessary  talent,  but  simply 
shows  that  for  some  reason  or  other  they  were  not 
able  to  display  their  ability.  Possible  nervous- 
ness, want  of  experience,  or  injudicious  choice 
of  parts  deprives  them  for  a  time  of  their  power  ; 
while  later  on  experience,  good  advice,  or  some 
fortunate  circumstance  allows  them  to  bring  to 
the  surface  what  was  concealed  within.  In  a 
word,  then,  the  first  essential  quality  for  an  actor 
consists  in  an  inborn  talent,  the  character  of 
which  might  possibly  be  described  as  an  imagina- 
tive and  assimilative  faculty  which  allows  him  to 
merge  his  individuality  into  that  of  another. 

* '  The  next  essential  is  the  constant  study  and 
work  required  to  cultivate  and  improve  natural 
gifts.     I  have  never  seen  genius  succeed  without 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    ii 

labor;  and  I  suppose  it  is  the  inseparable  quality 
of  genius  that  it  will  never  neglect  activity  in  the 
special  branch  of  science  or  art  toward  which  it  is 
inclined.  Was  it  not  Goethe  who  said  that  genius 
was  always  accompanied  by  an  extraordinary 
ability  to  work  and  that  its  peculiar  character 
partly  consisted  of  an  instinctive  knowledge  how 
to  work  ?  But  the  happy  possessor  of  genius  has 
intuitively  a  deeper  insight  into  the  mysteries  of 
art  which  enables  him  to  learn  quickly  and  which 
shows  him  the  most  direct  path  to  follow. 

''  I  do  not  think  that  the  feeling  of  a  special 
aptitude  for  acting  should  be  much  relied  upon. 
Genius  is  generally  unconscious  of  itself.  I  have 
generally  observed  that  the  most  eminent  artists 
were  often  the  most  diffident  and  unassuming  and 
that  they  passed  frequently  through  seasons  of 
great  discouragement.  The  right  frame  of  mind, 
I  imagine,  for  one  who  enters  upon  a  dramatic 
career  must  not  consist  so  much  in  a  feeling  of 
confidence  in  his  own  powers  as  in  a  sincere  de- 
votion to  his  art, — a  firm  belief  in  its  high  mission, 
while  in  his  heart  must  burn  that  sacred  flame 
which  gives  him  courage  and  energy  to  overcome 
all  obstacles  and  undergo  all  privation.  It  is 
what  we  Catholics  call  vocation.     It  would  be  a 


74         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

great  mistake  to  choose  the  profession  with  the 
idea  that  money  comes  easier  and  work  is  less 
hard  in  this  than  in  any  other.  There  is  little 
hope  for  the  advancement  of  such  aspirants. 
There  is  no  greater  mistake  than  to  suppose  that 
mere  professional  training  is  the  only  necessary 
acquirement.  The  general  cultivation  of  the 
mind,  the  development  of  all  the  intellectual 
faculties,  the  knowledge  how  to  think,  are  more 
essential  to  the  actor  than  mere  professional  in- 
struction. In  no  case  should  he  neglect  the  other 
branches  of  art ;  all  of  them  being  so  near  akin, 
he  cannot  attain  to  a  fine  artistic  taste  if  he  is  en- 
tirely unacquaintedr  with  music,  the  plastic  arts, 
and  poetry. ' ' 

Mr.  Lawrence  Barrett  once  wrote  :  **  Industry 
in  any  art  is  generally  the  resource  of  those  who 
are  not  gifted  by  nature  for  their  calling.  Give 
it  to  the  qualified  man  and  the  product  is  a  Gar- 
rick,  a  Salvini,  a  Coquelin.  But  no  fitness,  no 
amount  of  genius  will  take  the  place  of  industry 
and  culture.  I  can  conceive  no  calling  in  which 
the  necessity  for  labor — constant,  enduring  labor 
— is  so  great  as  that  of  the  actor  who  would  suc- 
ceed in  his  profession.  The  man  who  familiarizes 
himself  with  the  best  things  in  literature  and  in 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    75 

all  the  arts  naturally  raises  his  own  standards  and 
his  ideals  become  purer  and  higher.  This  knowl- 
edge will  exhibit  itself  in  every  part  in  which  he 
appears  ;  it  forms  the  unexplainable  something 
which  separates  the  man  of  great  parts  from  the 
man  of  mediocre  ability.  These  accomplishments 
refine  the  taste,  and  the  influence  of  taste  in  the 
conception  of  character  is  a  very  important  one  ; 
it  separates  the  uncommon  from  the  common.  It 
refines  the  conception  and  adorns  the  performance. 
Refinement  exhibits  itself  in  the  voice,  in  the 
looks,  and  in  the  gesture. 

' '  The  danger  to  the  young  actor  lies  in  his  be- 
ing too  suddenly  thrust  forward  in  his  career,  in 
the  whisperings  of  vanity  which  often  lead  him  to 
mistake  the  applause  of  the  audience,  which  has 
been  really  given  for  the  sentiments  of  the  author, 
as  a  tribute  to  his  own  merit.  The  actor  who  does 
not  realize  that  each  day  ought  to  teach  him 
something  in  his  profession  has  reached  a  point 
where  his  place  will  soon  be  taken  by  others. 
The  life  of  the  actor  is  a  constant  and  laborious 
struggle.  The  dramatic  art  is  in  the  words  of 
Shakespeare  *  a  mirror  of  nature.'  The  actor 
holds  that  mirror  up  :  it  is  therefore  necessary 
that  he  should  be  familiar  with  the  nature  he  is 


7^         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

to  represent.  Only  wide  reading,  large  observa- 
tion, intense  industry,  and  perseverance  can  keep 
him  acquainted  with  the  knowledge  of  the  na- 
ture of  his  time — its  changing  expressions  and 
forms. ' ' 

Miss  Mitchell  says  :  * '  To  succeed  on  the  stage 
the  candidate  must  have  a  fairly  prepossessing 
appearance,  a  mind  capable  of  receiving  pictur- 
esque impressions  easily  and  deeply,  a  strong 
artistic  sense  of  form  and  color,  the  faculty  of 
divesting  herself  of  her  own  mental  as  well  as 
physical  identity,  a  profound  sympathy  with  her 
art,  utter  sincerity  in  assuming  a  character,  power 
enough  over  herself  to  refrain  from  analyzing  or 
dissecting  her  part,  a  habit  of  generalization,  and 
at  the  same  time  the  quick  eye  and  ready  inven- 
tion for  detail,  a  resonant  voice,  a  distinct  articu- 
lation, natural  grace,  presence  of  mind,  a  sense 
of  humor  so  well  under  control  that  it  will  never 
run  riot,  a  gift  of  being  able  to  transform  herself 
at  will  into  any  type  of  character,  pride,  even 
conceit,  in  her  work,  patience,  tenacity  of  pur- 
pose, industry,  good  humor,  and  docility.  She 
must  behave  in  her  earlier  years  very  much  as  if 
she  were  a  careful,  self-respecting  scholar,  taking 
lessons  of  people  better  informed  than  herself, 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    n 

with  her  eyes  and  ears  constantly  open  and  ready 
to  receive  impressions. ' ' 

Madame  Modjeska  adds :  *'  Of  the  three  ele- 
ments that  in  my  opinion  go  to  make  up  a  good 
dramatic  artist— the  first  one,  technique,  must  be 
acquired  by  professional  training.  The  second 
and  higher  one,  which  is  artistic  instinct,  may 
originate  in  a  natural  genius,  but  can  and  ought 
to  be  improved  by  the  general  cultivation  of  the 
mind.  But  there  is  yet  something  beyond  these 
two.  It  is  inspiration.  This  cannot  be  acquired 
or  improved,  but  it  can  be  lost  by  neglect.  In- 
spiration, which  Jefferson  calls  his  demon,  but 
which  I  would  call  my  angel,  does  not  depend  on 
us.  Happy  the  moments  when  it  responds  to  our 
appeal.  It  is  only  at  such  moments  that  an  artist 
can  feel  satisfied  in  his  work,  pride  in  his  creation; 
and  this  feeling  is  the  only  real  and  true  success, 
which  ought  to  be  the  object  of  his  ambition." 

Mr.  Jefferson  says  :  *'  What  are  the  qualities 
that  one  should  possess  to  become  a  successful 
actor  or  actress  ?  This  is  a  difiicult  question  to 
answer.  What  would  be  the  reply  of  a  scientist 
if  you  were  to  ask  him  what  were  the  qualities 
necessary  to  become  a  successful  astronomer 
or  a  great  naturalist  ?     I  fancy  I  see  the  old 


7^         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

gentleman  now.  He  removes  his  spectacles  and, 
thoughtfully  rubbing  his  nose,  looks  at  the  ques- 
tioner as  if  he  were  a  long  way  off.  He  says  : 
'  Well,  really — I — dear  me,  will  you  just  say  that 
over  again?'  You  repeat  the  query.  'Well,' 
he  says,  *  perhaps  inborn  ability  may  be  of  some 
service  ;  and  then  I  should  think  that  a  great 
love,  even  a  passion,  for  such  a  calling  might  be 
valuable  ;  but  even  these  advantages  and  a  great 
many  more  I  cannot  think  of  will  be  of  very  little 
use  unless  they  are  joined  to  earnestness  and 
industry. ' 

''  Now  I  would  say  that,  in  addition  to  these 
qualifications,  to  make  the  successful  actor  one 
must  be  gifted  with  sensibility,  imagination,  and 
personal  magnetism.  The  art  must  be  commenced 
at  the  foundation.  The  student  should  be  con- 
tent to  enter  upon  the  lower  walks  of  the  pro- 
fession, and  this  is  his  first  stumbling-block, 
because  the  lower  positions  are  erroneously  con- 
sidered to  be  degrading.  But  to  *  carry  a  banner ' 
is  necessary  and  is  certainly  not  degrading  to  the 
beginner  in  the  art  of  acting.  All  professions  as- 
sume that  the  student  shall  master  the  drudgery 
of  his  calling.  Before  the  astronomer  makes  his 
great  discoveries  he  must  have  learned  arithmetic. 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    79 

The  famous  chemist  tries  the  most  simple  experi- 
ments, and  does  not  hesitate  to  soil  his  hands  in 
the  laboratory.  This  simple  drudgery  is  the  key 
to  the  dramatic  profession,  yet  the  thought  of  it 
aflfrights  the  tyro  ;  and  how  natural  that  it  should 
do  so,  for  all  the  apparently  degrading  offices  of 
other  occupations  are  performed  in  private  ,'  but 
on  the  stage  the  personal  mortification  has  to  be 
borne  in  the  full  gaze  of  the  public,  and,  still 
worse,  in  the  presence  sometimes  of  friends  and 
relations  who  have  come  expressly  to  see  how 
*  our  John  '  will  act  his  part.  Poor  John  !  He 
had  rather  the  whole  world  had  been  there  than 
that  small  family  party,  who  themselves  are  in- 
dignant at  the  manager  for  giving  their  relative 
such  a  little  thing  to  do.  And  to  think  that  this 
same  mortification  has  to  be  repeated  night  after 
night,  perhaps  season  after  season !  Do  you  not 
recognize  other  qualities  that  must  now  support 
him  ?  Should  he  not  have  nerve  and  fortitude  ? 
and  how  seldom  these  are  coupled  with  sensibility 
and  imagination !  By  many  failures  he  may  learn 
to  succeed  and  thus  find  out  what  not  to  do  rather 
than  what  to  do. 

'*  We  all  know  the  young  man  who  calls  after 
our  early  dinner — say  about  four  o'clock,  just  as 


8o         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

we  are  going  to  take  our  sacred  nap — and  craves 
our  confidence.  He  fears  his  family  will  offer 
very  serious  objections  to  his  entering  the  theat- 
rical profession,  and  of  course  for  their  sakes  as 
well  as  his  own  he  would  not  think  of  holding  a 
subordinate  position.  It  is  true  he  has  failed  as  a 
hatter,  and  his  success  in  upholstery  did  not  seem 
to  place  him  in  a  position  to  be  entirely  punctual 
in  the  payment  of  his  board.  But  he  felt  that  he 
had  that  within  him  that  could  accomplish  Ham- 
let. Such  young  persons  should  remember  that 
some  of  the  greatest  actors  have  begun  by  holding 
inferior  positions.  Many  have  failed  year  after 
year  and  been  utterly  discouraged  until  some  for- 
tunate chance  has  brought  out  the  latent  strength 
within  them." 

Mr.  Barrett  once  said:  *'  Kvery  gift  both  mental 
and  physical  that  a  bountiful  nature  can  bestow 
upon  a  man  will  be  found  of  use  to  the  successful 
actor.  No  man,  of  course,  has  all  these  gifts  ; 
few  have  any  of  them  developed  to  perfection.  I 
do  not  think  the  question  of  bodily  size  has  any- 
thing to  do  with  success.  There  have  been  large 
generals  and  small  generals.  It  is  necessary  to 
have  a  good  body,  but  it  is  also  necessary  to  have 
an  aptitude  for  your  calling  and  an  acute  mind." 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    8i 

Speaking  also  of  physical  qualifications  Miss 
Mitchell  says  :  * '  Physical  qualifications  in  candi- 
dates for  stage  honors  is  rather  a  delicate  subject 
to  discuss.  It  is  absurd  to  ignore  the  fact  that  a 
woman's  personal  appearance  is  an  important 
factor  in  the  problem  of  her  success  upon  the 
stage.  An  ugly  woman,  no  matter  how  clever,  is 
so  heavily  weighted  in  the  struggle  that  it  is 
hardly  worth  her  while  to  continue  it.  Extraor- 
dinary genius,  with  the  help  of  a  friendly  oppor- 
tunity, has  sometimes  been  able  to  combat  the 
prejudice  which  opposes  a  homely  woman.  But 
the  conflict  is  nearly  always  a  hopeless  one.  And 
I  must  confess  that  this  is  only  natural.  An 
actress  appeals  to  the  eye  almost  as  much  as  she 
does  to  the  ear  and  to  the  judgment.  She  is  a 
component  part  of  one  stage  picture  after  another. 
As  a  figure  in  a  tableau  she  is  of  course  expected 
to  be  picturesque.  To  ask  the  spectator,  there- 
fore, to  shut  his  eyes  to  her  personal  appearance 
is  to  exclude  him  from  a  large  portion  of  the 
grounds  on  which  he  has  a  right  to  base  his 
opinion.  I  believe,  frankly,  that  a  fair  amount 
of  comeliness  is  a  necessary  ingredient,  and 
that  without  this  fair  amount  the  neophyte  is 
just  as  much  out  of  the  competition  as  if  she 

6 


82         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

had  a  thin  voice,  a  club-foot,  or  some  variety  of 
paralysis. ' ' 

Miss  Clara  Morris  insists  that  hard  work  and 
no  end  of  it,  the  capacity  for  taking  infinite  pains, 
lie  at  the  bottom  of  stage  success.  And  she  gives 
some  instances  of  such  work  accomplished  in  the 
course  of  her  own  career.  She  says  :  ''  When, 
some  years  ago,  I  found  myself  cast  for  the  part 
of  Cora  in  Article  ^7,  and  learned  that  there  was 
a  mad  scene  for  me  to  act,  I  was  alarmed.  The 
traditional  stage  maniac  was  a  combination  of 
rolling  eyes,  snorting  starts,  and  noisy  declama- 
tion, sometimes  ridiculous  and  always  a  bore. 
Therefore  tradition  could  not  help  me.  When 
Mr.  Daly,  with  unintentional  cruelty,  took  me 
aside  and  informed  me  that  everything  depended 
upon  just  one  act — that,  to  quote  his  exact  words, 
*  the  play  must  stand  or  fall  by  the  mad  scene,'  I 
nearly  fell  then  and  there  from  the  fright  he  gave 
me.  The  following  nightmare  fortnight  I  shall 
never  forget.  Having  learned  the  words  or  lines 
of  my  part  and  settled  the  question  of  the  costumes 
to  be  worn,  every  moment  of  my  time  was  given 
to  the  study  of  the  character  Mr.  Daly  had  en- 
trusted to  me  to  develop  and  place  before  his  pub- 
lic.    I  regarded  Cora  as  a  beautiful,  uneducated, 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    83 

half-tamed  animal,  a  possible  victim  to  hysteria 
from  the  first — it  was  from  this  standpoint  I  made 
my  study.  But  when  all  was  done  I  felt  to  my 
dismay  a  degree  of  uncertainty.  With  an  anx- 
iously exacting  manager  behind  me  and  a  coolly 
critical  audience  before  me,  to  enter  upon  so  im- 
portant a  task  in  a  doubtful  frame  of  mind  was 
simply  to  court  failure.  For  once  I  dared  not 
trust  to  my  imagination  or  to  my  sympathy.  I 
felt  I  must  have  facts  to  support  me,  and,  like  the 
hook-handed  captain,  I  must  *  take  an  observa- 
tion.' I  then  made  a  pilgrimage  to  the  insane 
asylum  on  Blackwell's  Island  ;  but  while  there  it 
suddenly  dawned  upon  me  that  it  would  be  a 
cruel  and  heartless  act  to  single  out  for  study 
some  individual  unfortunate  upon  whom  the  hand 
of  God  was  resting  so  heavily,  and  then  to  imitate 
her  before  a  crowd  of  people.  It  would  be  like 
taking  advantage  of  a  crippled  child.  I  felt  it 
would  be  kinder  and  perhaps  more  artistic  to 
choose  two  or  three  symptoms  common  to  all 
cases  of  insanity,  and  then  by  carefully  presenting 
these  general  symptoms  to  suggest  the  insanity 
of  Cora. 

'*  With  that  thought  in  my  mind,  while  all 
the  woman  in  me  bent  the  head  before  such  an 


84         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

aggregation  of  human  misery,  while  every  nerve 
shuddered  from  the  frightful  sights  and  sounds, 
the  actress  made  note  of  gibbering  laugh,  swaying 
body,  and  broken,  incoherent  speech.  Ah,  me, 
it  was  dreadful  !  I  was  observing  with  a  ven- 
geance. Still  I  had  found  my  facts.  They  made 
a  sure  foundation  on  which  to  place  the  super- 
structure of  imagination.  I  had  suffered  greatly 
from  terror,  hard  work,  and  sleeplessness,  but  I 
was  amply  repaid  ;  for  after  the  first  performance 
not  only  the  generous  public  but  my  gratified 
manager  and  the  very  critics  themselves  gave  me 
words  of  praise  for  the  work  I  had  done,  the  char- 
acter I  had  created. 

**  It  is  not  always  easy  to  make  one's  observa- 
tions. I  remember  that  on  one  occasion  I  experi- 
enced considerable  difl&culty  in  obtaining  the 
subject  I  wished  to  study.  It  was  at  the  time 
that  Messrs.  Shook  and  Palmer  were  about  to 
produce  Miss  Multon  at  the  Union  Square  Theatre. 
Miss  Multon  dies,  but  there  is  in  the  whole  play 
no  word  which  indicates  the  nature  of  the  disease 
which  causes  her  death.  After  due  consultation 
the  powers  who  were  decided  that  the  lady  should 
die  of  heart  disease.  A  very  simple  matter  so  far 
as  the  powers  were  concerned,  but  a  different 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    85 

matter  to  me  who  had  the  part  to  play.  I  knew 
absolutel}^  nothing  about  heart  disease,  nor  could 
I  find  a  single  friend  or  acquaintance  who  could 
assist  me.  I  turned  to  the  doctor  under  whose 
care  I  then  was  and  asked  his  help.  After  some 
conversation  he  decided  that  angina  pectoris  was 
what  I  was  looking  for,  for  it  seemed  to  adapt 
itself  perfectly  to  the  requirements  of  the  charac- 
ter I  described  to  him.  He  began  by  telling  me 
something  of  the  structure  of  the  heart.  He 
showed  me  some  ugly  pictures  that  looked  to  my 
eyes  like  sections  of  ripe  tomatoes  with  blue 
radishes  growing  through  them.  He  taught  me 
where  my  heart  was  located  and  informed  me 
that  in  the  ordinary  stage  gesture,  when  the  hand 
seeks  the  heart,  the  hand  is  something  like  a  foot 
away  from  that  organ.  He  minutely  and  repeat- 
edly described  to  me  the  attitude  and  expression 
of  one  enduring  in  speechless,  almost  breathless, 
agony  that  awful  torture  called  by  doctors  angina 
pectoris.  This  was  to  be  used  for  the  climax  of 
the  play.  So  far  we  had  gone  smoothly  enough. 
But  suddenly,  to  use  a  theatrical  expression,  the 
doctor  '  stuck.'  He  declared  his  utter  inability 
to  convey  to  me  an  idea  of  the  manner  in  which 
a  patient  breathes  when  suffering  from  excitement 


86         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

and  fatigue.  That  was  unfortunate,  for  it  was  on 
that  symptom  I  most  relied  to  indicate  to  the 
audience  what  was  Miss  Mul ton's  physical  con- 
dition, her  eloquent  language  making  plain  her 
mental  woes.  I  begged  the  doctor  to  show  me 
how  I  should  breathe,  but  he  shook  his  head 
and  said  : 

**  '  No,  no  !  You  must  see  a  subject.'  At  the 
next  visit  he  informed  me  that  the  only  heart 
subject  he  had  found  was  a  man  bearded  to  the 
eyes.  *  But,'  said  he,  '  I  '11  find  you  a  subject  or 
that  man's  beard  shall  come  oJBf,  for  you  must  see 
that  movement  of  nostril  and  mouth.'  Not  more 
than  two  hours  after  there  was  a  violent  ring  at 
the  door-bell  and,  glancing  from  the  window  and 
seeing  the  doctor's  carriage,  I  hurried  into  the  hall, 
and,  looking  down,  saw  a  very  cruel  thing.  The 
doctor  and  a  woman  were  standing  at  the  foot  of 
the  long  staircase.  Then  he  caught  her  by  the 
arm  and,  starting  by  her  side,  ran  her  up  the  whole 
long  flight  of  stairs.  Shall  I  ever  forget  that 
woman's  face  as  she  stood  swaying,  clinging  to 
the  door  frame  !  Her  ghastly,  waxen  pallor,  the 
strained,  scared  look  in  her  eyes  ;  the  dilating 
nostrils  ;  above  all  the  movement  of  the  muscles 
about  the  mouth  which  contracted  the  upper  lip 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    ^7 

at  every  hurtling,  gasping  breath.  The  doctor 
pushed  by  her  and  hastily  whispered  :  *  You  are 
a  student  and  not  well  enough  to  attend.'  So, 
burning  with  shame,  I  took  my  cue,  and  going 
forward  I  felt  her  pulse  and  asked  her  a  few  ap- 
propriate questions.  We  were  alone  then  for  a 
few  moments,  and  she  told  me  her  pitiful,  com- 
monplace story.  I  questioned  her  closely  as  to 
how  anger  and  surprise  affected  her,  and  finding 
that  she  was  poor  and  had  a  child  to  support,  I 
slipped  a  bill  into  her  hand  as  she  rose  to  go. 
She  was  thanking  me  quietly  when  her  eyes  fell 
upon  the  figure  of  the  bill.  Instantly,  over  her 
neck,  her  face,  her  ears,  there  flamed  a  color  so 
fiercely,  hotly  red  that  it  seemed  to  scorch  the 
skin.  Her  very  wrists,  where  they  were  bare 
above  her  gloves,  were  red.  Her  hand  flew  to 
her  side  in  the  very  gesture  the  doctor  had  been 
teaching  me.  She  gave  a  little  laugh  and  ner- 
vously remarked  :  *  I  feel  so — ^hot  and  prickly. 
I  suppose — I  am  all  red  !  You  see  it  was  the 
surprise  that  did  it.  Don't  look  so  frightened. 
Miss,  I  have  no  pain.  I  ain't  red  neither,  am  I, 
now  ?  '  Heaven  knows  she  was  not ;  her  very 
lips  were  white.  So,  with  thanks  and  pallid 
smiles,  the  poor  soul  removed  herself  and  her  fell 


88         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

disease  from  my  presence,  and  I  had  received  my 
painful  object  lesson. 

*'  The  night  before  the  production  of  the  play, 
in  a  spirit  of  mischief  I  drew  up  a  document  for 
the  doctor  to  sign,  in  which  he  acknowledged 
that  in  my  study  of  heart  disease  he  had  been  my 
teacher.  *  For, '  said  I,  *  should  the  critics  attack 
that  part  of  my  work  you  will  have  to  share  the 
blame.'  I  brought  forth  my  document  and  he 
signed  it.  The  critics  did  not  attack,  but  I  still 
keep  the  acknowledgment  and  it  bears  the  signa- 
ture, 'B.  C.  Seguin.'  " 

Sir  Henry  Irving  says  :  **  What  is  the  art  of 
acting?  I  speak  of  it  in  its  highest  sense  as 
the  art  to  which  Roscius,  Better  ton,  and  Garrick 
owed  their  fame.  It  is  the  art  of  embodying  the 
poet's  creations,  of  giving  them  flesh  and  blood, 
of  making  them,  the  figures  which  appeal  to  your 
mind's  eye  in  the  printed  drama,  live  before  you  on 
the  stage.  '  To  fathom  the  depths  of  character, 
to  trace  its  latent  motives,  to  feel  its  finest  quiver- 
ings of  emotion,  comprehend  the  thoughts  that 
are  hidden  under  words  and  thus  possess  oneself 
of  the  actual  mind  of  the  individual  man,'  such 
was  Macready's  definition  of  the  player's  art ; 
and  to  this  we  may  add  the  test  of  Talma.     He 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    89 

described  tragic  action  as  '  the  union  of  grandeur 
without  pomp  and  nature  without  triviality.'  It 
demands,  he  says,  the  endowment  of  high  sensi- 
biHty  and  intelligence.  The  actor  who  possesses 
this  double  gift  adopts  a  course  of  study  peculiar 
to  himself.  In  the  first  place,  by  repeated  exer- 
cises, he  enters  deeply  into  the  emotions,  and  his 
speech  acquires  the  accent  proper  to  the  situation 
of  the  personage  he  has  to  represent.  This  done, 
he  goes  to  the  theatre  not  only  to  give  theatrical 
effect  to  his  studies  but  also  to  yield  himself  to  the 
spontaneous  flashes  of  his  sensibility  and  all  the 
emotions  which  it  involuntarily  produces  in  him. 
What  does  he  then  do  ?  In  order  that  his  in- 
spirations may  not  be  lost,  his  m'emory  in  the 
silence  of  repose  recalls  the  accent  of  his  voice, 
the  expression  of  his  features,  his  action — in  a 
word,  the  spontaneous  working  of  his  mind  which 
he  had  suffered  to  have  free  course,  and  in  effect 
everything  which  in  the  moments  of  his  exalta- 
tion contributed  to  the  effects  he  had  produced. 
His  intelligence  then  passes  all  these  means  in 
review,  connecting  and  fixing  them  in  his  memory 
and  re-employing  them  at  pleasure  in  succeeding 
representations.  These  impressions  are  often  so 
evanescent  that  on  retiring  behind  the  scenes  he 


go         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

must  repeat  to  himself  what  he  had  been  playing 
ratber  than  what  he  had  to  play.  By  this  kind 
of  labor  the  intelligence  accumulates  and  preser\^es 
all  the  creations  of  sensibility.  It  is  by  this  means 
that  at  the  end  of  twenty  years  (it  requires  at 
least  this  length  of  time)  a  person  destined  to  dis- 
play fine  talent  may  at  length  present  to  the  pub- 
lic a  series  of  characters  acted  almost  to  perfection. 
*'  You  will  readily  understand  from  this  that  to 
the  actor  the  well-worn  maxim  that  art  is  long 
and  life  is  short,  has  a  constant  significance.  The 
older  we  grow,  the  more  acutely  alive  are  we  to 
the  difficulties  of  our  craft.  I  cannot  give  you  a 
better  illustration  of  this  fact  than  a  story  which 
is  told  of  Macready.  A  friend  of  mine,  once  a 
dear  friend  of  his,  was  with  him  when  he  played 
Hamlet  for  the  last  time.  The  curtain  had  fallen, 
and  the  great  actor  was  sadly  thinking  that  the 
part  he  loved  so  much  would  never  be  his  again. 
And  as  he  took  off  his  velvet  mantle  and  laid  it 
aside  he  muttered  almost  unconsciously  the  words 
of  Horatio  :  '  Good-night,  sweet  Prince  ' ;  then, 
turning  to  his  friend  :  '  Ah,'  said  he,  *  I  am  just 
beginning  to  realize  the  sweetness,  the  tenderness, 
the  gentleness,  of  this  dear  Hamlet  ! '  Believe  me, 
the  true  artist  never  lingers  fondly  upon  what  he 


Qualifications  for  Stage  Success    91 

has  done.  He  is  ever  thinking  of  what  remains 
undone  ;  ever  striving  toward  an  ideal  which  it 
may  never  be  his  fortune  to  attain.  It  is  often  sup- 
posed that  great  actors  trust  to  the  inspiration  of 
the  moment.  Nothing  can  be  more  erroneous. 
There  will  be,  of  course,  moments  when  an  actor, 
at  a  white  heat,  illumines  some  passage  with  a 
flash  of  imagination  ;  but  the  actor's  great  sur- 
prises are  generally  well  weighed,  studied,  and 
balanced.  We  know  that  Edmund  Kean  con- 
stantly practised  before  the  mirror  effects  which 
startled  his  audience  by  their  apparent  spon- 
taneity. It  is  the  accumulation  of  such  effects 
which  enables  an  actor,  after  many  years,  to  pre- 
sent many  great  characters  vith  remarkable  com- 
pleteness." 

Miss  Cayvan  once  gave  me  the  following  little 
list  of  what  she  termed  the  qualifications  for  suc- 
cess upon  the  stage  : 

A  strong  physique. 

An  unimpaired  digestion. 

A  slender  figure. 

A  marked  face. 

A  carrying  voice. 

A  lack  of  real  feeling. 

An  abundance  of  pretended  feeling. 

Much  magnetism. 

Fascination  of  manner. 


92         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

Purity  of  speech. 
A  general  knowledge  of  history. 
A  good  general  education. 
A  general  knowledge  of  costuming. 
A  practical  knowledge  of  economy  in  dress. 
Considerable  business  faculty. 
Unflagging  industry. 
Undaunted  ambition. 
An  utter  lack  of  sensitiveness. 
A  vast  capacity  for  taking  pains. 
An  absolute  and  undisputed  devotion  to  the  theatre. 
An  unwedded  life. 

An  ability  to  distinguish  criticism  from  abuse  on  ful- 
some gush. 

A  readiness  to  profit  thereby. 

Some  genius  at  advertising. 

Quickness  at  seizing  opportunities. 

A  well  defined  specialty. 

A  good  memory. 

Good  luck. 

Talent. 


CHAPTER  VI 


TH^  BKST  TRAINING  FOR  TH^  STAGK 


AUTHORITIES  differ  as  to  how  an  actor 
should  get  his  training — whether  from  pri- 
vate teachers,  from  schools  of  dramatic  art,  of 
which  we  now  have  nearly  a  dozen  in  this  country, 
or  by  going  at  once  into  a  theatre  and  taking  up 
any  work  with  which  the  management  may  be 
willing  to  trust  a  beginner — for  instance,  carrying 
a  banner,  or  playing  the  **  thinking"  part  as- 
signed to  a  supernumerary. 

Dion  Boucicault  wrote  :  '  *  Some  years  ago  the- 
atrical lyondon  was  moved  in  the  direction  of  a 
school  for  acting  and  I  was  invited  by  the  heads 
of  the  stage  to  give  my  views  of  this  matter. 
They  were  and  they  always  have  been  very  de- 
cided. First,  that  acting  could  be  taught  only 
on  the  stage,  as  swimming  can  be  taught  in  the 
water,  and  riding  on  horseback.  All  chamber 
93 


94         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

tuition  is  worthless.  Blocution  and  declamation 
is  the  last,  not  the  first,  lesson  a  young  actor  or 
actress  should  learn.  The  stage  is  a  picture 
frame  in  which  is  exhibited  that  kind  of  panorama 
where  the  picture  being  unrolled  is  made  to  move, 
passing  before  the  spectator  with  scenic  con- 
tinuity. As  these  scenes  are  directed  toward  the 
spectator,  the  art  of  the  persons  who  figure  in 
them  is  to  so  present  themselves  that  although 
engaged  with  each  other  they  may  be  presented 
also  to  the  audience  whose  sympathy  the  action  is 
intended  to  arouse.  These  conditions  are  the 
postulates  of  our  art  which  is  addressed  to  the  eye 
as  well  as  to  the  ear.  For  if  the  agony  of  one 
who  suiGfers  from  a  great  misfortune  be  expressed 
by  words  alone,  we  fail  to  believe  in  it  unless  the 
expression  of  the  face  and  gestures  of  passion  and 
the  natural  movement  of  the  body  under  such 
mental  torture  accompany  and  enforce  the  diction. 
I  deny  that  such  can  be  taught  and  practised  on 
a  hearth-rug.  I  deny  that  Antony  can  address  an 
imaginary  populace,  that  Romeo  can  make  love 
to  an  absent  Juliet,  or  kill  an  ideal  Tybalt.  All 
the  adjuncts  must  be  present,  the  scene  must  be 
acted,  not  declaimed,  and  all  the  interlocutors 
must  share  in  it,  all  the  movement  must  take 


Best  Training  for  the  Stage     95 

place,  for  the  individual  study  is  only  a  part  of 
the  whole. 

"  And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  a  certain  manager 
in  New  York,  having  an  interest  in  these  subjects, 
offered  the  use  of  his  theatre  and  all  its  appliances 
to  establish  a  school  upon  this  scheme  ;  but  he 
carried  it  further.  He  undertook  to  furnish  all 
the  expenses  attending  the  enterprise  so  the  stu- 
dents should  obtain  instruction  free,  and  he  still 
further  proposed  to  select  a  few  of  the  most  promi- 
nent students  and  pay  them  a  weekly  salary. 
When  this  proposal  was  made  public — it  was  at 
first  received  with  incredulity — the  applications 
for  admission  numbered  daily  from  seventy  to  one 
hundred.  At  a  preliminary  inspection  the  greater 
number  of  applicants  were  excluded  and  restored 
to  the  useful  occupations  they  were  more  fitted  to 
fill.  Those  who  passed  inspection  were  subjected 
to  examination.  To  each  was  assigned  a  short 
scene  for  study  and  a  day  appointed  to  witness 
their  attempts.  Again  a  selection  was  made  and 
many  rejected.  About  eighty  remained,  and  of 
these  the  school  of  acting  was  formed.  Out  of 
the  singular  experiences  we  enjoyed  we  discovered 
that  for  one  male  student  showing  any  promise 
of  excellence,  we  had  six  female  pupils.    The 


9^         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

gentlemen  were  for  the  most  part  awkward,  stiff, 
ungainly,  and  slow  ;  the  ladies  graceful,  quick, 
and  refined.  Among  the  lady  students  we  found 
twenty-two  who  aspired  to  be  Juliets  and  Paulines 
and  Parthenias,  and  one  who  consented  to  play 
old  women.  When  the  school  was  formed  the 
pupils  were  called  into  the  auditorium  of  the 
theatre  and  assembled  in  the  orchestra  seats. 
The  following  menu  for  the  day  had  been  pre- 
viously issued  :  The  garden  scene  in  Romeo  and 
Juliet ;  fifth  act  of  The  Rivals  ;  the  fourth  act  of 
King  John  ;  the  third  act  of  The  School Jor  Scandal, 
Bach  part  in  these  scenes  was  cast  to  two  or  three 
different  students.  Romeo  and  Juliet  was  called. 
Two  of  the  students  stepped  upon  the  stage  and 
played  the  scene  while  the  whole  school  became 
spectators,  and  as  corrections  were  made  by  the 
director  and  faults  explained,  the  lesson  was  con- 
veyed equally  to  the  two  performers  and  to  the 
audience.  In  the  middle  of  this  scene  it  was 
stopped  ;  one  of  the  performers  was  invited  to  re- 
tire to  the  audience  and  a  new  Romeo  or  Juliet 
was  called  forward  to  proceed  with  the  perform- 
ance. It  soon  became  evident  that  this  second 
performer  had  already  profited  by  what  had  been 
seen  and  took  care  to  avoid  errors  already  pointed 


Best  Training  for  the  Stage     97 

out.  The  system  thus  first  introduced  into  the- 
atrical affairs  developed  two  unexpected  results  : 
The  students  were  seized  with  stage  fright  pre- 
cisely as  they  would  be  liable  to  be  affected  before 
a  public  audience.  Then  extreme  eagerness  to 
excel  each  other  was  excited  by  the  hearty  ap- 
plause with  which  any  excellence  is  recognized. 
And  this  acute  perception  of  what  is  good  is  a 
sign  of  the  artistic  quality ;  for  surely  the  fine 
critic  is  only  the  disembodied  artist.  Stage 
fright,  like  sea-sickness,  is  overcome  at  last,  and 
is  better  to  be  so  before  the  student  appears  in 
public." 

John  McCuUough  says  :  '*  It  is  usually  con- 
sidered advisable  to  enter  the  profession  at  an 
early  age,  probably  seventeen  or  eighteen  years, 
and  it  is  true  that  many  of  the  most  successful 
actors  may  be  said  to  have  grown  up  on  the  stage. 
Doubtless  it  is  well  to  begin  early,  but  it  is  also 
important  that  the  beginner  should  first  lay  broad 
and  deep  the  foundations  of  general  intelligence 
and  culture,  and  neglect  no  subsequent  opportun- 
ity for  widening  and  deepening  his  mental  grasp. 
The  art  of  the  actor,  of  the  tragedian  especially, 
touches  many  sides  of  life,  and  every  department 
of  human  knowledge  contributes  to  its  truth  and 


9^         The  Stage  as  a  Career 

power.  As  to  the  place  of  beginning,  the  best  is, 
of  course,  where  the  finest  example  of  the  art  is 
to  be  seen,  and  that  is  in  the  large  cities.  But 
whether  there  or  elsewhere,  the  first  step  to  be 
taken  is  to  learn  thoroughly  the  routine  of  the 
stage — to  enter,  to  cross,  to  leave,  etc.,  so  that 
this  may  all  be  done  as  it  were  unconsciously, 
leaving  the  intelligence  free  to  grapple  with  the 
intellectual  and  emotional  requirements  of  the 
part. 

*'  Methods  of  culture,  voice,  and  gesture  are 
almost  as  various  as  the  peculiarities  of  men,  but 
care  should  be  taken  never  to  push  either  to 
straining  or  excess.  It  is  an  exceedingly  difficult 
thing  even  to  stand  quietly  on  the  stage,  and 
there  is  an  almost  universal  tendency  in  young 
actors  to  over-gesture.  And  it  should  be  the  con- 
stant aim  to  cultivate  that  dignity  and  repose  of 
manner  which  is  in  itself  commanding,  which  is 
always  suggestive  of  reserve  power,  and  which 
contributes  so  forcibly  by  contrast  to  make  a 
climax  of  passion  striking  and  effective.  A  dead 
level  of  vehemence  is  as  dreary,  to  say  the  least, 
as  one  of  dullness.  It  is  only  through  the  culti- 
vation of  this  repose  and  self-command  that  the 
mind  is  left  free  to  elaborate  the  niceties  of  detail, 


Best  Training  for  the  Stage     99 

the  apparently  involuntary  shades  of  look  and 
movement  and  attitude,  the  subtleties  of  by-play, 
all  those  little  things  the  easy  and  graceful  ob- 
servance of  which  puts  the  last  finish  on  the 
actor's  art. 

'*  The  traditions  of  the  stage  are  a  body  of  rules 
containing  much  that  is  true  and  artistic  and  not 
a  little  that  is  false  and  artificial.  No  actor  who 
hopes  for  eminence  can  afford  wholly  to  disregard 
or  despise  them,  and  as  little  can  he  afford  to  be 
rigidly  bound  by  them.  It  is  the  prerogative  of 
greatness  in  all  walks  of  life  to  break  down  tradi- 
tion, to  show  by  daring  departure  from  them 
wherein  the  old  ideals  were  false,  and  to  create 
the  new  and  true.  But  it  must  not  be  therefore 
assumed  that  merely  to  depart  from  tradition  is 
always  to  be  great.  The  true  course  for  the 
aspirant  would  seem  to  be  to  learn,  first,  all  that 
tradition  enjoins  and  then  bend  all  the  force  of 
intelligence  and  feeling  to  the  task  of  evolving 
something  which,  in  the  light  of  all  past  experi- 
ence and  the  scrutiny  of  study  and  reflection,  shall 
be  better  than  the  old.  Original  conception 
grafted  upon  knowledge  of  the  past  is  the  true 
method  of  evolution  in  stage  art.  It  is  safe  to 
say  that  no  man  can  ever  be  a  great  exponent  of 


loo       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

emotions  which  he  cannot  feel.  Without  trans- 
fusing his  work  with  the  fierce  Hght  of  genuine 
feeling  in  himself  the  actor  may  be  perfect  in  his 
methods,  but  he  will  be  cold  and  merely  artificial 
— he  can  never  present  godlike  moments  when 
his  auditors  are  swept  away  in  a  tempest  of  his 
own  passion.  Feeling — inspiration,  some  may  call 
it — there  must  be,  but  it  should  be  governed  in  its 
methods  of  expression  by  the  cultivated  intelli- 
gence and  the  trained  physical  resources.  Tears, 
for  example,  are  moving  and  efiective,  but  to  make 
grotesque  faces,  to  snivel  and  blow  the  nose  is  not 
dignified.  Tears  may  fall  on  the  stage,  but  the 
trained  artist  must  see  to  it  that  their  trivial  and 
ludicrous  attendants  are  eliminated.  It  follows 
from  this  view,  as  a  necessary  corollary,  that 
playing  a  given  part  in  precisely  the  same  way 
on  every  occasion  is  impossible  to  the  really  great 
artist.  No  man  is  always  in  precisely  the  same 
mood.  When  his  nerves  are  wrongly  strung  from 
any  cause,  his  training  in  the  technique  of  his  art 
will  save  him  from  failure  ;  but  he  cannot  be 
always  at  his  best,  and  hence  exact  precision  on 
all  occasions  may  be  held  to  be  conclusive  evi- 
dence of  artificiality. ' ' 

Madame  Modjeska  says  in  the  course  of  an 


Best  Training  for  the  Stage   loi 

article  in  the  North  American  Review:  **  The 
best  school  of  acting  seems  to  me  to  be  the  stage 
itself — when  one  begins  by  playing  small  parts 
and  slowly,  step  by  step,  reaches  the  more  im- 
portant ones.  There  is  a  probability  that  if  you 
play  well  in  minor  characters  you  will  play  greater 
ones  well  by  and  by;  while  if  you  begin  with  the 
latter  you  may  prove  inefficient  in  them  and  after- 
wards be  both  unwilling  and  unable  to  play  small 
parts.  It  was  my  ill-fortune  to  be  put,  soon  after 
my  entrance  on  the  stage,  in  the  position  of  star  in 
a  travelling  company.  I  think  it  was  the  greatest 
danger  I  encountered  in  my  career  ;  the  conse- 
quence was  that  when  I  afterwards  entered  a 
regular  stock  company  I  had  not  only  a  great 
deal  to  learn  but  much  more  to  unlearn.  The 
training  by  acting,  in  order  to  be  useful,  requires 
a  certain  combination  of  circumstances.  It  is 
good  in  the  stock  companies  of  Kurope  because 
with-them  the  playbill  is  constantly  changed  and 
the  young  actor  is  required  to  appear  in  a  great 
variety  of  characters  during  a  short  period.  But 
it  may  prove  the  reverse  of  good  in  a  theatre 
where  the  beginner  may  be  compelled  for  a  year 
or  so  to  play  one  insignificant  part.  Such  a 
course  would  be  likely  to  kill  in  him  all  the  love 


I02       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

of  his  art,  rendering  him  a  mechanical  automaton 
and  teaching  him  but  very  little. 

''  Private  instruction  can  be  given  either  by- 
professors  of  elocution  or  by  experienced  actors. 
I  know  nothing  of  the  first,  as  there  are  no  pro- 
fessors of  elocution  to  my  knowledge  outside  of 
America  and  of  Kngland,  and  I  never  knew  one 
personally.  But,  speaking  of  private  lessons  given 
by  experienced  actors,  there  are  certainly  a  great 
many  arguments  and  instances  in  favor  of  that 
mode  of  instruction.  Of  course  a  great  deal  de- 
pends upon  the  choice  of  a  teacher.  But  sup- 
posing he  is  capable,  he  can  devote  more  time  to 
a  private  pupil  than  he  can  to  one  in  a  public 
school.  Some  of  the  greatest  actresses  that  ever 
lived  owed  in  great  part  their  success  to  the  in- 
structions of  an  actor  of  less  genius  than  them- 
selves. Take,  for  instance,  Rachel  and  Samson. 
Strange  to  say,  it  often  happens  that  very  good 
actors  make  but  poor  professors,  while  the  best 
teacher  I  ever  met  was,  like  Michonnet,  but  an 
indifferent  actor  himself  The  danger  is  that  the 
pupil  in  this  kind  of  instruction  may  become  a 
mere  imitator  of  his  model.  Imitation  is  the 
worst  mode  of  learning  and  the  worst  method  of 
art,  as  it  kills  the  individual  creative  power,  and 


Best  Training  for  the  Stage   103 

in  most  cases  the  imitators  only  follow  the  peculiar 
failings  of  their  model.  There  are  many  objec- 
tions to  dramatic  schools,  some  of  which  are  very 
forcible.  There  is  in  them,  as  in  private  teach- 
ing, the  danger  of  imitation  and  of  getting  into  a 
purely  mechanical  habit  which  produces  conven- 
tional, artificial  acting.  Yet  it  is  not  to  be  denied 
that  a  great  number  of  the  best  French  and  Ger- 
man actresses  have  been  pupils  of  dramatic  schools, 
and  that  two  of  these  schools — those  of  Paris  and 
of  Vienna — have  justly  enjoyed  a  great  celebrity. 
Of  the  schools  I  have  known  personally  I  cannot 
speak  very  favorably.  One  point  must  be  borne  in 
mind  :  a  dramatic  school  ought  to  have  an  inde- 
pendent financial  basis,  and  not  rely  for  its  sup- 
port upon  the  number  of  its  pupils,  because  in 
such  a  case  the  manager  may  be  induced  to  re- 
ceive candidates  not  in  the  least  qualified  for  the 
dramatic  profession." 

Upon  this  same  subject  Mr.  I^awrence  Barrett 
once  wrote  :  '*  It  would  be  best  if  the  young  man 
could  start  in  a  good  school  of  actors,  so  that  he 
might  have  none  but  good  models  to  guide  him. 
In  the  present  constitution  of  our  stage  that  is  an 
absolute  impossibility.  No  matter  what  fitness  a 
man  might  possess,  he  would  find  it  extremely 


I04       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

difficult  to  get  into  a  company  of  good  actors  to 
make  a  beginning.  He  can  do  the  next  best  thing  : 
he  can  go  where  he  can  get  excellent  experience. 
That  he  can  do  where  the  standard  is  not  particu- 
larly high.  There  whatever  talent  he  may  pos- 
sess will  have  a  freer  and  broader  scope.  He 
must  commence  at  the  bottom.  No  man  can  be 
an  actor  or  succeed  in  any  calling,  who  does  not 
begin  at  the  beginning  and  learn  thoroughly  the 
alphabet  of  his  task.  But  the  man  who  has  high 
qualifications  has  this  advantage  over  the  man 
who  has  not:  that  he  can  much  more  readily  begin 
at  the  beginning  than  the  man  of  ordinary  ability. 
No  man  has  ever  yet  clutched  the  diadem  of  suc- 
cess at  a  single  bound.  Such  a  prodigy  of  genius 
may  arise  who  shall  be  able  to  solve  intuitively 
problems  of  art ;  but  we  have  not  yet  seen  him. 
The  greatest  actors  have  been  the  hardest  workers. 
The  best  school  for  the  young  actor  is  to  put  him 
at  the  hard  work  of  the  theatre.  His  training 
must  be  essentially  practical.  No  school  of  elocu- 
tion, no  training  outside  of  the  theatre,  can  I  re- 
gard as  at  all  valuable.  All  teachers  of  elocution 
come  to  the  theatre  for  their  models;  why  should 
the  pupil  go  out  of  it  for  his  ?  In  other  words, 
the  novice  will  find  in  the  theatre  exactly  what 


Best  Training  for  the  Stage   105 

he  wants  if  he  knows  how  to  get  hold  of  it.  The 
theatre  is  the  school  for  the  actor  ;  it  furnishes  the 
practical  experience  he  needs,  and  it  leaves  the 
beginner  ample  margin  for  the  exercise  of  his  own 
genius  beyond  the  lines  within  which  he  has  been 
confined. ' ' 

Miss  Maggie  Mitchell  used  to  say  that  a  girl 
who  wanted  to  act  should,  if  possible,  get  into  a 
stock  company  even  in  a  small  town  and  even  in 
the  most  inferior  capacity,  but  keeping  within 
reach  of  the  influence  of  her  own  home.  ' '  Man- 
agers," she  said,  in  an  article  upon  this  subject, 
**  no  matter  what  may  be  said  to  the  contrary,  are 
always  looking  for  talent  in  the  bud,  and  if  a 
young  girl  with  reasonable  pretensions  to  good 
looks,  who  is  modest  and  well-behaved  and  shows 
the  slightest  ability,  with  a  common-sense  readi- 
ness to  begin  at  the  bottom  of  the  ladder,  should 
offer  herself  for  engagement  the  chances  are  that 
she  would  get  it  with  much  less  difficulty  than 
she  had  imagined.  There  are  no  doubt  numerous 
candidates  even  for  the  smallest  positions  on  the 
stage,  but  those  who  possess  even  moderate  quali- 
fications are  extremely  rare.  Managers  have  to 
take  the  best  they  can  pick  from  a  host  of  inter- 
lopers.    I  do  not  think  that  novices  reap  any 


io6       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

practical  benefit  from  private  lessons.  The 
neophyte  learns  not  merely  of  her  professional 
teacher  but  of  her  audience,  and  to  be  informed 
by  the  one  without  being  influenced  by  the  other 
is  to  have  very  lop-sided  instruction.  The  stage 
itself  is  the  best,  in  fact  the  only  school  for 
actresses.  It  is  a  profession  made  up  of  traditions 
and  technicalities.  Mere  oral  advice  or  train- 
ing in  elocution  or  gesture  counts  for  very  little. 
It  is  in  fact  too  often  an  obstacle  which  has  to  be 
eventually  and  with  difiiculty  surmounted.  In 
some  instances  I  have  known  instruction  of  this 
sort  to  bring  about  as  prejudicial  effects  as  if  the 
victim  had  tried  to  learn  the  art  of  swimming  at  a 
dancing  academy  and  then  put  the  knowledge 
thus  obtained  into  practice.  The  modulations  of 
the  voice  and  the  language  of  illustrative  gesture 
ought  to  be  either  taught  by  example  or  in- 
sensibly acquired  by  experience.  To  learn  them 
by  precept  and  rule  has  for  a  result  usually  that 
woodenness  and  jerkiness  which  one  cannot  help 
noticing  in  the  youthful  prodigies  of  the  stage. 
To  be  an  actress  one  has  to  learn  other  things 
than  merely  how  to  act,  and  that  is  why  nobody 
ever  succeeds  in  the  profession  who  tried  to  enter 
it  at  the  top. 


Best  Training  for  the  Stage   107 

* '  When  the  aspirant  begins  her  career  let  her 
be  neither  so  young  that  she  will  be  called  pre- 
cocious, nor  so  advanced  in  years  that  her  mind 
has  lost  its  youthful  elasticity.  Eighteen,  I 
think,  should  be  the  minimum  age,  because  a 
girl  has  by  that  time  outgrown  the  impulses  and 
the  unreasoning  ardor  of  childhood,  as  well  as 
acquired  a  speaking  acquaintance  with  the  con- 
ditions of  her  existence.  She  ought  to  be  able  at 
eighteen  to  look  out  for  herself  and  to  keep  stead- 
ily in  the  path  she  has  decided  to  tread.  The 
early  bent  of  her  studies  and  reading  should  be 
precisely  the  same  as  that  of  any  other  woman 
aspiring  to  be  liberally  educated.  She  should,  if 
possible,  speak  French — at  all  events,  read  it. 
She  should  be  familiar  with  English  literature. 
She  should  cultivate  an  acquaintance  through 
books  and  otherwise  with  the  highest  as  well  as 
the  lowest  forms  of  human  society.  Refinement 
and  modesty  ought  to  be  characteristic  of  every 
actress.  As  for  the  parts,  Shakespearian  and 
otherwise,  which  a  neophyte  should  study,  I  can 
only  say  that  in  these  days  a  young  girl  need  not 
confuse  or  overload  her  mental  digestion  with 
heavy  diet.  Shakespearian  plays  are  hardly  ever 
produced,   and  the  standard   drama   should  be 


io8       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

mastered  by  degrees  in  actual  performance  upon 
the  stage.  The  day  has  gone  by  when  it  was 
necessary  for  the  actor  or  actress  to  have  a  big 
repertory.  The  combination  system  has  reduced 
such  once  needful  equipment  to  mere  lumber 
which  takes  up  more  room  mentally  than  it  is 
really  worth." 

Mr.  Burnand,  writing  in  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury^ says  :  ' '  Each  theatre  should  be  a  school  of 
dramatic  art.  Let  pupils  be  rehearsed  by  the 
prompter  in  whatever  piece  may  be  running  at 
the  time.  I^et  the  pupils  be  shifted  about  from 
part  to  part  until  something  like  a  well-dressed 
dramatis  personcB  is  obtained.  Let  the  strictest 
rules  be  observed  during  rehearsal.  Pupils  able 
to  do  so  should  pay  a  fixed  fee.  Pupils  unable  to 
do  so  should  bind  themselves  as  apprentices  to 
the  manager  of  the  theatre,  who  would  have  the 
refusal  of  their  services  for  a  certain  time  either 
for  town  or  country.  The  prompter  and  stage- 
manager  should  receive  extra  pay  for  this 
work,  to  which  the  fees  would  contribute.  The 
paying  pupils  should  be  free  to  go  from  one 
theatre  to  another.  *  Orders  '  for  witnessing  per- 
formances should  only  be  given  to  those  unable 
to  afibrd  payment.     Fines  should  be  imposed  for 


Best  Training  for  the  Stage   109 

unpunctuality.  Some  such  plan  as  this,  carefully 
considered,  would  afford  the  opening  so  much 
needed  by  young  women  of  good  birth  and  educa- 
tion who  would  go  on  the  stage  if  they  could  be 
assured  beforehand  that  their  professional  sur- 
roundings would  be  respectable.  Only  under  the 
greatest  safeguard  can  a  young  lady  attempt  to 
adopt  this  quasi  profession.  At  some  theatres 
there  may  be  a  veneer  of  respectability  over  its 
Bohemianism  ;  but  't  is  a  very  thin  varnish,  and 
for  my  part  I  prefer  the  rough  Bohemian  kindli- 
ness expressed  in  a  free  and  easy  manner  toward 
the  young  beginner  to  the  strain  of  keeping  up 
the  best  company  manners  (soon  to  vanish  when 
real  earnestness  comes  out  in  the  excitement  of 
rehearsal)  which  is  as  snobbish  in  the  green-room 
as  it  is  anywhere  out  of  it.  All  members  of  a 
company  have  a  right  to  the  use  of  the  greenroom 
of  their  theatre  ;  it  forms  a  sort  of  fantastic  ante- 
chamber to  the  court  of  public  appeal  to  which 
everyone  connected  with  the  case  is  admitted. 
In  a  theatre  where  the  entertainment  is  mixed,  so 
must  be  necessarily  the  company  in  the  green- 
room. ' ' 

Sir  Henry  Irving,  in  addressing  a  college  class 
upon  the  same  subject,  says  :    "  There  are  some 


no       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

who  lament  that  there  are  now  no  schools  for 
actors.  This  is  a  very  idle  lamentation.  Every 
actor  in  full  employment  gets  plenty  of  schooling, 
for  the  best  schooling  is  practice,  and  there  is  no 
school  so  good  as  a  well-conducted  playhouse. 
The  truth  is  that  the  cardinal  secret  of  success  in 
acting  is  found  within,  while  practice,  is  the  truest 
way  of  fertilizing  those  germs.  To  efl&ciency  in 
the  art  of  acting  there  should  come  a  congregation 
of  fine  qualities.  There  should  be  considerable 
though  not  necessarily  systematic  culture.  There 
should  be  delicate  instinct  of  taste,  cultivated 
consciously  or  unconsciously  to  a  degree  of  sub- 
tle nicety.  There  should  be  a  power  at  once 
refined  and  strong  of  both  perceiving  and  express- 
ing to  others  the  significance  of  language  so  that 
neither  shades  nor  masses  of  meaning,  so  to 
speak,  may  be  either  lost  or  exaggerated.  Above 
all,  there  should  be  a  sincere  and  abounding  sym- 
pathy with  all  that  is  good  and  great  and  inspir- 
ing. That  sympathy  most  certainly  must  be 
under  the  control  and  manipulation  of  art,  but  it 
must  be  none  the  less  real  and  genuine,  and  the 
artist  who  is  a  mere  artist  will  stop  short  of  the 
highest  moral  effects  of  his  craft.  I^ittle  of  this 
can  be  got  in  a  mere  training-school,  but  all  of  it 


Best  Training  for  the  Stage   1 1 1 

will  come  forth  more  or  less  fully  armed  from  the 
actor's  brain  in  the  process  of  learning  his  art  by 
practice.  For  the  way  to  learn  to  do  a  thing  is 
to  do  it ;  and  in  learning  to  act  by  acting,  though 
there  is  plenty  of  incidental  hard  drill  and  hard 
work,  there  is  nothing  commonplace  or  unfruit- 
ful." 


CHAPTER  VII 


DRAMATIC  SCHOOIvS  AND  TKACHKRS 


SUPPOSE)  that  a  young  man  or  a  young 
woman,  after  due  consideration  and  with 
the  conviction  that  a  dramatic  career  is  a  useful 
one  to  the  community  at  large,  and  one  which 
will  aflford  a  competency  and  by  no  means  result 
in  deterioration  of  character  or  loss  of  social  re- 
spect, asks  what  is  the  best  means  by  which  an 
education  for  the  stage  is  to  be  obtained.  I  have 
given  the  views  upon  this  question  of  several  noted 
actors  and  actresses,  the  majority  of  whom  agree 
that  the  young  actor  must  be  taught  by  some  one 
either  inside  or  outside  of  the  theatre.  Until 
within  the  last  twenty  years  dramatic  schools, 
such  as  have  flourished  in  the  capitals  of  Kurope 
for  a  century  or  more,  have  been  unknown  in  this 
country.  There  are  now  in  this  country  several 
schools  which  are  recognized  in  the  profession  as 

112 


Dramatic  Schools  and  Teachers  113 

giving  to  the  young  actor  a  certain  amount  of 
technical  knowledge  which  may  certainly  be  ob- 
tained on  the  stage  in  the  long  run,  but  which 
can  be  more  easily  and  more  quickly  acquired 
from  professional  teachers.  I,et  me  outline  the 
methods  of  the  largest  and  longest  established  of 
these  dramatic  academies.  The  one  I  have  in 
mind  has  been  in  existence  for  fifteen  years  and 
has  graduated  several  hundred  young  people, 
many  of  whom  have  made  enviable  names  for 
themselves  in  the  profession.  It  is  directed  not 
by  an  actor  but  by  a  scholar  who  has  made  his 
life-work  the  study  of  the  drama  and  dramatic 
action.  Associated  with  him  are  a  number  of 
actors  and  actresses.  This  faculty  is  a  large  one, 
including  some  twenty-six  persons.  The  course 
at  this  school  consists  of  two  years,  and  the  cur- 
riculum includes  the  following  studies  :  Voice, 
Reading,  Stage  Pantomime,  Dancing,  Fencing, 
Make-up,  Stage  Business,  Singing,  Physical 
Training.  Of  course  the  illustrative  work  in 
connection  with  these  studies  consists  of  endless 
rehearsals  of  all  sorts  of  plays,  from  Shakespeare 
to  farce,  undertaken  under  the  eyes  of  experi- 
enced teachers.  The  theory  of  the  institution  is, 
that  in  order  to  know  how  to  act  one  should  act ; 


114       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

but  that  a  vast  amount  of  time  and  trouble  is 
saved  if  the  young  actor  is  enabled  to  do  his  work 
on  the  stage  with  the  advice  and  assistance  of 
some  experienced  teacher  who  will  often  tell  him 
in  ten  words  what  it  might  have  taken  him  ten 
weeks  to  find  out  by  actual  experience  and  ob- 
servation upon  the  stage  of  some  theatre  where 
he  might  find  employment  at  the  bottom  of  the 
ladder. 

Before  a  pupil  is  accepted  in  this  school  he  or 
she  must  fill  out  a  blank  form  giving  information 
as  to  the  following  matters  : 

PHYSICAI, 

1.  Age. 

2.  Birthplace. 

3.  Height. 

4.  Weight. 

5.  Proportions. 

6.  Complexion. 

7.  Health. 

8.  Physical  Condition. 

PERSONAI, 

1.  Parentage. 

2.  Single,  married,  divorced. 

3.  Past  environments. 

4.  Educational  acquirements. 

5.  Occupation. 

6.  Personality. 

7.  Temperament. 


Dramatic  Schools  and  Teachers  115 


8. 

Esthetic  taste. 

9- 

Dramatic  instinct. 

10. 

Line  of  business. 

II. 

Hobbies. 

INTKI^IvKCTUAI, 

I. 

Memory. 

2. 

Powers  of  application. 

3- 

Powers  of  imagination. 

4. 

Powers  of  observation. 

5. 

Confused  tendencies. 

6. 

Ambitions, 

7. 

Self-control. 

8. 

Interest  and  attention. 

9- 

Self-consciousness. 

10. 

Analysis.' 

During  the  last  winter  at  this  particular  school 
there  have  been  at  least  a  dozen  public  perform- 
ances of  plays,  either  in  the  theatre  attached  to 
the  school  or  in  one  of  our  public  playhouses,  at 
which  the  advanced  pupils  appeared.  The  aver- 
age number  of  pupils  in  the  whole  school,  includ- 
ing some  who  did  not  intend  to  go  upon  the  stage, 
but  who  were  there  chiefly  to  study  elocution  and 
dramatic  reading,  was  less  than  two  hundred. 
For  the  last  few  years  about  twenty-five  young 
people  have  been  graduated  every  year  from  the 
school,  and  this  year  it  was  announced  that  every 
one  of  the  graduates  had  been  offered  a  position 


ii6       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

on  the  stage  by  some  reputable  manager  before 
they  had  received  their  diplomas. 

The  school  year  lasts  from  October  to  May, 
during  which  time  the  student's  life  is  not  an 
easy  one  if  conscientious  work  is  to  be  done  ; 
there  are  classes  and  lessons  from  morning  until 
late  in  the  afternoon.  The  pupils  of  the  senior 
year,  or  second  year,  are  all  expected  to  take 
part,  if  possible,  as  supernumeraries  at  some  of 
the  important  theatres  if  there  are  plays  running 
at  the  time  which  call  for  their  services.  This 
last  winter  all  these  people  were  constantly  em- 
ployed at  salaries  of  from  five  to  ten  dollars  a 
week,  while  a  few  have  obtained  small  parts  for 
which  they  have  been  paid  as  much  as  twenty 
dollars  a  week.  It  need  scarcely  be  said  that 
young  people  such  as  these  students  make  a  far 
better  appearance  upon  the  stage  in  scenes  requir- 
ing a  number  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  than  the 
ordinary  supernumeraries  who  can  be  depended 
upon  by  the  theatrical  manager. 

Unfortunately  for  the  impecunious  young  man 
who  feels  that  he  has  Hamlet  in  him,  the  cost  of 
instruction  of  this  sort  in  New  York  is  not  small. 
The  school  which  I  have  mentioned  makes  a 
charge  of  $400  for  the  first  year,  and  of  $300  for 


Dramatic  Schools  and  Teachers  117 

the  second  year.  In  addition  to  this  must  be 
considered  the  cost  of  living  in  New  York,  which 
will  not  fall  far  below  |io  a  week  if  all  the  little 
extras  are  counted.  These  expenses,  however, 
may  be  somewhat  offset  if  the  student  is  suc- 
cessful in  getting  constant  employment  during 
the  evening  ;  but  as  a  rule  it  is  unsafe  for  a  young 
man  or  a  young  woman  to  come  to  New  York  or 
to  Chicago  to  study  for  the  stage  unless  they  are 
sure  of  at  least  $800  a  year  for  their  two  years' 
work.  At  some  of  the  schools  the  charge  for 
tuition  is  less,  and  if  a  student  wishes  to  take 
lessons  only  in  certain  branches  and  goes  for  that 
purpose  to  private  teachers  the  expenses  may  be 
much  reduced,  although  a  really  good  private 
teacher  asks  about  as  much  for  one  lesson  as  the 
cost  of  class  instruction  for  a  whole  week  will 
amount  to.  The  value  of  the  nightly  appearances 
upon  the  stage,  even  as  supernumeraries,  cannot 
be  overestimated,  for  here  the  pupil  will  learn 
what  it  is  to  face  an  audience  and  become  accus- 
tomed to  the  atmosphere  of  the  real  stage. 

That  a  young  girl  should  never  go  to  New  York 
or  to  any  large  city  without  having  friends  upon 
whom  to  call  for  protection  and  advice,  is  espe- 
cially true  of  stage  aspirants,  for  as  a  rule  such 


ii8       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

young  people  are  impressionable,  ambitious,  over- 
sanguine,  and  susceptible  to  flattery  ;  and  they 
usually  have  enough  money  to  make  them  objects 
of  interest  to  swindlers.  It  is  perfectly  well 
known  that  in  New  York,  at  least,  there  is  a  regu- 
lar gang  of  scoundrels  on  the  watch  for  stage- 
struck  young  men  and  women.  Under  the  guise 
of  teachers,  managers,  actors,  such  men  manage 
to  win  the  confidence  of  their  victims  ;  they  ad- 
vertise the  most  glowing  prospects,  offering  to 
make  any  young  woman  a  good  actress  in  a 
dozen  or  twenty  lessons,  and  to  find  her  a  fine 
position  on  the  stage  when  the  dozen  lessons  have 
been  taken.  All  reputable  dramatic  schools  and 
teachers  warn  beginners  against  these  sharks,  but 
notwithstanding  such  warning  the  abominable 
business  seems  to  flourish.  It  is  conducted  some- 
what as  follows  : 

An  advertisement  appears  in  some  country 
paper  stating  that  Professor  Hamlet  Macbeth  will 
prepare  a  certain  number  of  young  women  for  the 
stage  upon  reasonable  terms  and  will  guarantee 
them  positions  when  they  are  qualified.  To  the 
innocents  who  take  this  bait  circulars  are  sent  set- 
ting forth  the  excellence  of  the  Professor's  work, 
his  distinguished  career,  his  success  as  a  teacher, 


Dramatic  Schools  and  Teachers  119 

and  describing  in  glowing  terms  the  fame  and 
fortune  assured  to  every  one  of  his  pupils.  Ac- 
cording to  the  Professor's  circulars,  all  the  promi- 
nent theatrical  managers  of  the  country  are 
clamoring  for  the  pupils  of  his  academy  at  any 
terms.  The  girl  who  submits  herself  to  Professor 
Macbeth 's  instruction  is  sure  of  at  least  $50  a 
week  (for  a  beginning)  the  moment  her  education 
is  finished.  The  first  step  in  the  game  is,  by 
means  of  such  circulars  and  letters,  to  get  the  girl 
to  New  York.  If  she  is  poor,  the  Professor  takes 
what  little  she  has  in  return  for  aimless  and 
worthless  lessons  that  last  as  long  as  her  money 
does.  When  that  is  exhausted  she  is  bundled  off 
without  ceremony.  If  she  has  a  few  hundred 
dollars  the  game  is  more  prolonged  and  more 
interesting.  When  a  dozen  lessons  have  been 
given  the  Professor  discovers  that  Miss  Smith 
was  born  for  the  stage  and  that  it  will  pay  her 
not  to  waste  further  time  upon  lessons,  which  may 
be  good  enough  for  average  people,  but  to  make 
a  public  appearance  at  once.  The  Professor  has 
j  ust  received  a  letter  from  a  well-known  manager, 
Mr.  Booth  Crummies,  who  is  getting  up  a  first- 
class  company  to  play  Romeo  and  Juliet  through 
New  Jersey,  and  needs  a  Juliet.     There  is  a 


I20       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

fortune  in  the  scheme,  and  if  Miss  Smith  can  ad- 
vance I250  as  a  guarantee  of  good  faith  and  $100 
for  the  necessary  dresses,  Mr.  Crummies  will  en- 
gage her  on  the  spot  at  a  salary  of  $60  a  week  for 
thirty  weeks.  Mr.  Crummies  has  never  seen  her 
act,  but  he  trusts  wholly  to  Professor  Macbeth' s 
excellent  judgment,  and  the  Professor  has  assured 
him  that  Miss  Smith  as  Juliet  will  simply  astonish 
New  Jersey — which  is  probably  perfectly  true. 

So  Miss  Smith  pays  down  her  $300,  more  or  less, 
signs  a  contract  with  Manager  Crummies,  and  is 
congratulated  by  Professor  Macbeth.  The  re- 
hearsals are  held  in  a  small  hall  in  New  York, 
where  Miss  Smith  meets  the  other  members  of 
the  company  for  the  first  time.  She  may  be 
rather  dismayed  at  finding,  when  she  knows 
them,  that  all  have  paid  something  down  for  the 
privilege  of  joining  the  company,  but  they  all 
have  contracts,  and  a  contract  is  a  contract.  The 
rehearsals  last  a  week  or  ten  days.  Some  of  the 
young  people  are  queer.  Miss  Smith  cannot 
understand  why  the  manager  has  engaged  a 
young  man  who  stutters  to  play  Romeo.  But 
personally  he  is  a  nice  young  man  from  the  back- 
woods and  he  evidently  admires  Miss  Smith's 
style  of  beauty.     The  opening  night  is  to  be  in 


Dramatic  Schools  and  Teachers  121 

some  small  Jersey  town,  perhaps  a  hundred  miles 
from  New  York.  Miss  Smith  may  feel  in  her 
bones  that  she  is  not  quite  her  own  ideal  of  Juliet; 
but  she  is  perfectly  certain  that  she  is  a  good  deal 
better  than  the  rest  of  the  company.  Crummies 
has  watched  her  rehearse,  and  has  told  her  that 
she  is  ''  immense."  The  great  day  comes.  The 
members  of  the  company  are  taken  by  the  man- 
ager to  the  favored  town,  and  in  a  dusty,  dirty 
little  village  opera-house,  so  called.  Miss  Jane 
Smith  makes  her  debut  as  Juliet.  Jane  Smith  is 
not  a  good  name  for  the  stage,  so  on  the  bills  she 
is  down  as  Irene  St.  Clair. 

The  little  hotel  is  queer,  the  theatre  is  queer, 
and  when  at  last  the  curtain  rises  the  audience 
is  found  to  be  queer,  too.  The  little  company 
are  all  new  at  the  business,  and  probably  Romeo 
and  Juliet  is  a  queer  performance.  It  is  an  even- 
ing of  excitement ;  so  much  so  that  Romeo  stut- 
ters terribly  and  even  Juliet  cannot  understand 
half  he  says.  The  audience  of  course  under- 
stands still  less.  But  it  is  a  small  audience  and 
not  very  demonstrative.  The  play  is  over  at  last, 
and  Mr.  Crummies  congratulates  one  and  all  of 
the  performers.  Everyone  goes  to  bed  happy,  to 
dream  of  fame  and  fortune.     The  next  morning 


122       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

the  company  is  to  take  a  train  for  the  next 
*' stand";  but  in  place  of  railroad  tickets  the 
leading  man  receives  a  letter  left  by  Crummies  in 
which  that  unfortunate  gentleman  declares  that 
through  the  rascality  of  a  trusted  partner  he  is 
left  penniless  and  has  been  obliged  to  run  away 
during  the  night  to  avoid  arrest.  He  would  have 
left  money  for  tickets  back  to  New  York  for  the 
company,  but,  unfortunately,  the  receipts  of  the 
previous  evening  only  amounted  to  $6.25,  not 
enough  to  pay  for  the  hall.  So  he  took  them  too. 
There  is  wailing  and  gnashing  of  teeth  in  the 
Romeo  and  Juliet  Company.  By  comparing  notes 
the  victims  discover  that  Crummies  must  have 
escaped  with  about  $800,  for  Miss  Smith  had  paid 
him  I300,  Romeo  $200,  and  all  the  others  lesser 
sums. 

When  the  unfortunates  get  back  to  New  York 
they  of  course  fall  foul  of  Professor  Macbeth,  but 
that  worthy  is  not  an  actor  for  nothing,  and  pro- 
fesses more  indignation  than  any  one.  He  had, 
he  says,  always  considered  Crummies  a  reputable 
manager.  After  all,  he  adds,  such  little  un- 
pleasantnesses are  one  of  the  peculiar  features  of 
the  profession.  This  experience  would  be  a  les- 
son to  them  all — one  for  which  he  would  charge 


Dramatic  Schools  and  Teachers  123 

them  nothing.  And  he  can  well  afford  it,  as  he 
goes  halves  every  year  in  a  repetition  of  several 
little  games  of  this  kind.  Sometimes  the  so- 
called  manager  keeps  the  company  together  for  a 
week's  performance  in  order  to  be  able  to  say  that 
the  expenses  have  bankrupted  him,  and  that  it 
was  the  actors'  fault  that  people  did  not  come  to 
see  them  act.  Of  course  the  victims  can  appeal 
to  the  police,  but  they  really  have  no  case  ;  the 
contracts  are  not  worth  the  paper  they  are  written 
on.  All  the  victims  are  young,  poor,  and  very 
anxious  not  to  have  it  known  that  they  have  been 
swindled.  They  get  back  to  their  country  homes 
as  best  they  can  to  take  up  the  old  life  where  they 
left  it  off.  Perhaps  Miss  Smith,  who  becomes 
teacher  of  the  Cross  Roads  school,  may  treasure 
a  theatrical  programme  in  which  Miss  Irene  St. 
Clair  is  down  as  playing  Juliet,  but  she  is  certain 
to  say  as  little  as  possible  about  her  theatrical 
adventure.  The  next  year,  or  perhaps  even  the 
next  month,  the  Professor  has  a  fresh  set  of 
dupes  to  be  plucked  with  the  aid  of  another 
Crummies,  or  perhaps  the  same  Crummies  under 
another  name. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

WGHTS   AND  SHADOWS  OF  THE)  I,IF^ 

ALMOST  every  noted  actor  with  whom  I  have 
talked  concerning  the  essential  qualifica- 
tions for  stage  work  has  placed  enthusiasm  at  the 
head  of  the  list.  The  man  or  woman  who  does 
not  love  the  work  is  pretty  sure  to  make  nothing 
of  it  and  to  retire  in  disappointment  sooner  or 
later,  or  else  to  continue  in  a  half-hearted  sort  of 
way  that  leads  to  nothing.  Of  course  it  is  a  hard 
life.  Miss  Clara  Morris,  who  has  seen  some  thirty 
years  of  it,  said  once  :  ' '  What  attraction  has  the 
stage  for  its  followers  that  they  are  so  devoted  to 
it  ?  Yes,  we  are  devoted  to  it,  we  respect  its  an- 
tiquity ;  we  admire  the  position  it  has  gained  in 
the  world  of  art ;  we  are  grateful  to  it  for  our 
daily  bread.  One  of  its  attractions  is  that  it  may 
prove  a  short  cut  to  popularity.  Then  people  of 
other  callings  transact  their  business  amid  more 
124 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  125 

or  less  dull  surroundings  and  return  to  their  homes 
for  that  which  the  actor  finds  at  the  theatre  alone, 
namely  :  light,  warmth,  music,  sociability.  For 
my  part,  I  do  not  believe  in  a  '  mute,  inglorious 
Milton.'  I  think  that  all  power  demands  expres- 
sion, and  the  employment  of  power  is  a  delight. 
The  actor  who  succeeds  feels  he  pleases  his  public 
and  therein  finds  his  own  pleasure.  When  tri- 
umph comes  to  him,  it  is  in  so  delightful  a  guise  he 
cannot  help  being  moved  by  it.  When  an  author 
places  his  book  before  the  public  he  must  wait ; 
he  learns  gradually  of  his  success.  Not  so  the 
actor.  His  work  receives  instant  recognition  in 
swift,  soul-satisfying  applause  ;  and  what  a  de- 
licious draught  it  is  !  It  produces  a  sort  of  divine 
intoxication  that,  having  once  experienced,  one 
longs  to  repeat." 

Upon  the  other  hand,  there  are  shadows  about 
the  career  of  the  stage  which  some  actors  find  so 
deep  as  to  obscure  all  its  possible  glories.  An 
actor  of  much  experience,  Mr.  Rudolph  de  Cor- 
dova, sets  forth  as  follows,  in  the  course  of  a 
magazine  article  published  in  the  Forum^  some 
of  his  woes  :  **  In  his  professional  career  as  an  art- 
ist the  actor  is  wholly  in  the  hands  and  at  the  mercy 
of  a  middle-man,  the  manager,  and  he  cannot 


126       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

make  the  rules  which  govern  his  life  or  work. 
In  few  other  professions  is  this  true  to  the  same 
extent.  So  long  as  the  painter  can  purchase  ma- 
terials he  can  exercise  his  art  and  appeal  to  the 
public  directly  and  individually  if  necessary  ;  and 
the  physician,  the  lawyer,  and  others  are  inde- 
pendent of  middle-men.  The  actor,  however,  no 
matter  how  skilful,  unless  he  be  a  *  star,'  must 
first  get  a  manager  to  engage  him  before  he  can 
earn  a  livelihood.  When  at  length  an  engage- 
ment is  obtained  his  position  is  by  no  means  se- 
cure, for  there  is  inserted  in  his  contract  a  clause 
like  the  following  : 

''  '  If  during  rehearsals  or  during  the  first 
week's  performance,  the  manager  shall  feel  satis- 
fied that  the  actor  is  incompetent  to  perform  the 
duties  for  which  he  is  engaged  or  is  inattentive  to 
business,  careless  in  the  rendering  of  characters, 
or  guilty  of  any  violation  of  the  rules  made  by 
the  manager,  then  the  manager  may  annul  this 
contract  without  notice.' 

'*  Even  if  this  clause  is  not  written  down  it  is 
considered  operative  as  a  recognized  rule,  an  un- 
written law. 

**  The  salary  of  the  average  player  is  put  down 
by  an  eminent  author  as  not  more  than  $1500  a 
year  earned  during  a  season  of  about  thirty  weeks. 


Lighis  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  127 

In  my  opinion  this  is  a  high  estimate,  for  $1200 
would  be  nearer  the  mark.  Out  of  this  the  actor 
— and  I  use  the  term  also  to  include  the  women 
of  the  stage — must  provide  the  clothes  worn  in 
the  play,  which  are  often  very  costly  ;  he  must 
make  a  neat  appearance  in  the  street,  defray  his 
hotel  bills,  pay  for  sleeping-cars  on  night  jour- 
neys (for  it  is  only  in  very  rare  instances  that 
the  manager  pays  for  them)  and  for  the  luxury 
of  a  parlor  car  when  he  can  get  it. 

*  *  He  must  also  set  aside  a  certain  sum  to  live  on 
during  the  long  interval  of  twenty  or  more  weeks 
between  seasons,  unless  he  has  a  private  income 
or  some  craft  bj'  the  exercise  of  which  he  may 
earn  money  when  not  acting  ;  and  he  should 
make  provision  also  for  old  age,  because  after  a 
certain  time  he  not  only  finds  it  difficult  to  stand 
the  incessant  travel,  but  with  increasing  years 
his  opportunities  of  employment  lessen. 

' '  Suppose,  however,  after  two  or  three  weeks' 
study  and  rehearsal  (for  which  no  remuneration 
is  paid)  he  is  deemed  satisfactory  by  the  manager; 
he  may  yet  find  himself  suddenly  thrown  out  of 
work  because  the  receipts  have  not  come  up  to 
the  managerial  expectations.  The  company  ei- 
ther disbands  or  is  reorganized — an  event  which 


128       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

may  mean  destitution  for  many  who  thus  find 
themselves  unexpectedly  thrown  out  of  employ- 
ment at  a  time  when  no  other  work  is  to  be  ob- 
tained. In  one  day  only  a  short  time  ago  no 
fewer  than  twenty-eight  companies  disbanded, 
throwing  at  least  280  bread-winners  out  of  em- 
ployment. But,  looking  on  the  brighter  side  and 
assuming  a  successful  engagement,  let  me  set 
down  the  average  actor's  life  as  I  know  it,  as  I 
have  lived  it,  without  those  accidental  hardships 
which  may  be  called  exceptional  misfortunes. 
I^et  me  show  the  conditions  under  which  a  man 
with  honest  purpose  and  a  high  artistic  aim  is 
compelled  to  live.  The  welfare  of  the  actor  is 
menaced  to-day  from  within  and  from  without : 
from  within  by  the  managers,  the  '  stars, '  and  the 
actors  themselves  ;  from  without  by  the  public 
and  the  press. 

'*  But  first  let  me  explain  the  different  kinds  of 
managers.  There  are  (i)  a  few  men  who  manage 
the  theatres  which  employ  stock  companies,  and 
to  the  most  of  these  the  following  remarks  are  not 
applicable  ;  (2)  those  who  employ  '  stars '  and 
travelling  companies;  (3)  the  'stars,'  who  are 
also  the  proprietors  of  the  companies  supporting 
them,  and  as  such  are  managers  although  they 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  1 29 

have  so-called  managers  who  look  after  the  details 
and  the  business  side  of  the  organization,  and 
who  may  also  have  a  proprietary  interest ;  (4)  the 
local  managers,  who  are  not  managers  at  all  but 
only  janitors  who  take  care  of  the  theatre  which 
they  *  book '  for  a  percentage  of  the  gross 
receipts. 

**  The  janitor  has  an  important  bearing  on  the 
actor's  condition,  which  finds  its  expression  in  his 
playing  and  possibly  in  his  nervous  organization. 
He  supplies  the  house  and  in  most  cases  furnishes 
quarters  for  the  actors  such  as  no  self-respecting 
slave-owner  would  in  the  old  days  have  con- 
demned a  slave  to  occupy.  For  the  public  no- 
thing is  too  good  :  fine  silken  draperies  hang  in 
the  boxes ;  soft,  comfortable  chairs  are  in  the 
auditorium,  which  is  as  handsome  and  harmoni- 
ously decorated  as  the  architect's  scheme  and  the 
owner's  purse  will  allow.  For  the  actor  anything 
is  good  enough.  Instead  of  silken  draperies  he 
finds  only  a  tattered  curtain  at  the  window,  if,  in- 
deed, he  finds  a  curtain  at  all,  or  even  a  window 
which  it  might  cover.  Instead  of  soft,  comfort- 
able chairs,  one  wooden  chair,  none  too  clean,  or 
a  chair  minus  a  back,  will  be  the  only  seat,  and 

not  infrequently,  if  he  wishes  to  sit  down,  he  must 
9 


I30       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

do  so  on  the  edge  of  his  trunk.  Instead  of  deli- 
cately tinted  walls,  he  will  find  dirty  walls  which 
have  not  been  treated  even  to  a  coat  of  whitewash 
for  years.  While  in  the  auditorium  a  soft  carpet 
covers  the  floor,  in  the  actor's  room  a  carpet 
rarely  exists  or,  if  by  chance  there  be  something 
which  was  once  a  carpet,  it  is  so  dirty  that  it 
would  be  better  away.  The  washing  appliances 
of  the  actor's  room  usually  consist  of  a  small  basin 
with  a  tap  of  running  water.  Most  people  would 
expect  that,  as  the  winter  is  the  theatrical  season, 
and  the  paints  used  by  the  actors  are  made  of 
grease,  hot  water  would  be  at  hand.  But  this  is 
rarely  the  case,  and  in  many  instances  running 
water  in  the  dressing-room  is  unknown.  It  is 
not  uncommon  for  actors  to  refrain  from  using 
the  basins,  preferring  to  remove  the  *  make-up '  as 
well  as  possible  with  vaseline  and  to  wait  until 
the  hotel  is  reached  to  complete  this  part  of  the 
toilet.  Tin  basins  and  buckets  are  not  the  worst 
that  I  have  seen  *  on  the  road,*  for  once  the  water 
was  in  dirty,  battered  old  lard  tins,  and  basins  had 
to  be  bought  by  our  manager. 

"  It  is  seldom  that  the  actor  other  than  the  star 
or  leading  man  gets  a  room  to  himself,  frequently 
having  to  share  these  discomforts  with  several 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  131 

members  of  the  company.  The  room  may  be 
under  the  stage,  or  in  the  *  flies, '  or  even  higher. 
In  either  case  the  lack  of  ventilation  is  appalling, 
the  heat  under  the  stage  being  exceeded  only  by 
the  heat  above  it,  and  it  is  a  wonder  that  actors 
do  not  die  by  the  score  of  throat  and  lung  com- 
plaints induced  by  draughts  in  an  overheated 
atmosphere.  The  stage-door  invariably  opens 
directly  on  the  street,  permitting  blasts  of  cold 
air  to  sweep  through  the  regions  behind  the  cur- 
tain. The  dressing-rooms  are  often  damp,  and 
I  have  dressed  with  three  other  gentlemen  in  a 
theatre  in  one  of  the  large  cities  where  we  had  to 
step  across  a  pool  of  water  in  the  middle  of  the 
room. 

**  But  before  entrance  to  the  dressing-room  can 
be  gained,  the  stage-door  must  be  passed.  The 
imposing  front  of  the  theatre  and  its  brilliant 
lights  are  for  the  public's  use  and  gaze,  and  the 
idea  that  anything  is  good  enough  for  the  actor 
is  carried  out  in  the  stage  entrance.  If  it  happens 
to  be  in  a  street  instead  of  an  alley-way — and 
alleys  are  always  dirty — it  is  almost  certain  that 
the  door  will  be  up  or  down  a  narrow  flight  of 
steps,  at  the  bottom  of  which  there  is  invariably 
in  wet  weather  a  pool  of  water.    The  stage  itself 


132       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

may  or  may  not  be  clean.  I  remember  once  in 
Chicago  noticing  that  the  stage  of  one  of  the 
chief  theatres  was,  to  put  it  delicately,  somewhat 
soiled,  and  I  asked  one  of  the  men  how  often  it  was 
washed.  *  Oh,  we  never  get  time  to  wash  it, '  he 
replied.  *  You  see  we  have  Sunday-night  per- 
formances and  we  are  always  using  it,  so  that  we 
can  only  sweep  it.'  Such  is  the  condition  behind 
the  scenes  as  noted  within  my  own  observation. 
Will  any  honest-minded  man  say  that  it  is  not  a 
degradation  to  be  condemned  to  occupy  such 
rooms?  Is  there  anyone — outside  the  dramatic 
profession — who  would  care  to  subject  a  fellow- 
being  to  these  conditions,  especially  a  fellow-being 
through  the  exercise  of  whose  abilities  he  makes 
his  living  and  whose  work  depends  greatly  on  the 
proper  use  of  the  emotional  faculties,  which  are 
largely  influenced  by  surroundings?  It  is  not 
much  that  the  actor  asks.  He  never  thinks  of 
anything  approaching  luxury  in  the  theatre,  but 
he  does  ask — he  has  a  right  to  demand — cleanli- 
ness. For  the  disgraceful  condition  of  the  theatres 
the  janitor  of  course  is  primarily  responsible,  but 
he  has  an  accessory  in  crime  in  the  person  of  the 
manager  of  the  company,  of  the  star,  and  even 
in  the  actors  themselves.     If  half  a  dozen  of  the 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  133 

leading  *  stars '  and  managers  were  to  combine 
and  inform  a  janitor  that  they  would  not  play  in 
his  house  unless  the  dressing-rooms  were  put  into 
proper  repair  and  order,  clean  quarters  would  re- 
place the  present  squalor  and  dirt.  Or  if  the 
manager  and  the  *  star, '  when  the  contract  for  the 
engagement  was  made,  put  in  a  clause  insisting 
on  the  dressing-rooms  being  neat  and  clean  and, 
finding  them  otherwise,  refused  to  allow  the  com- 
pany to  act  and  gave  the  reasons,  public  opinion 
would  unquestionably  insist  on  the  theatre  being 
made  decent.  Moreover,  the  protest  would  be  an 
advertisement — the  dearest  object  to  the  man- 
agerial heart — which  could  not  be  easily  over- 
estimated. The  '  star '  does  not  trouble  himself 
about  the  comfort  of  the  actor  because  his  mind 
is  fully  occupied  and  his  own  comfort  is  pretty 
well  looked  after.  The  best  room  in  the  theatre  is 
usually  known  as  the  '  star's ' ;  his  name  is  even 
printed  on  the  door,  as  if  there  were  a  possibility 
of  its  being  mistaken.  Besides  being  larger  than 
the  rest,  it  is  nearly  always  on  the  stage  floor  ;  it 
is  furnished  with  some  pretensions  to  comfort  ; 
the  floor  is  covered  with  a  carpet ;  it  has  light ; 
there  are  washing  appliances.  For  these  reasons 
and  because  nearly  every  '  star '  thinks  himself 


134       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

altogether  on  a  different  plane  from  the  actors  in 
his  support,  intercourse  between  him  and  them  is 
not  intimate  and  he  does  not  hear  of  their  dis- 
comforts and  degradations — at  least  until  they  are 
past  remedying.  The  average  theatrical  manager 
— not  the  star-actor  manager,  for  he  has  ambitions 
and  professional  pride  in  his  work  outside  of  mere 
money  considerations  —  is  a  vulgarian,  a  specu- 
lator who  deals  in  plays  and  players  as  other 
speculators  gamble  in  wheat,  pork,  or  stocks,  and 
money  is  the  be-all  and  end-all  of  his  existence. 
Men  and  women  with  their  brains  and  sensitive 
nervous  organizations  are  to  him  the  means  to 
his  end,  and  he  cares  as  much  for  them  as  other 
speculators  care  for  the  wares  they  deal  in. 

*  *  There  is  a  tension  in  a  theatre  during  a  per- 
formance which  can  be  distinctly  felt ;  and  after 
the  play  is  over  reaction  comes  and  with  it  the 
need  of  repose.  How  does  the  manager  satisfy 
this  need,  especially  when  playing  in  one-night 
stands  ?  By  arranging  to  leave  on  as  late  a  train 
next  day  as  possible,  one  would  think.  Nothing 
of  the  kind.  For  this  gentleman  there  is  usually 
but  one  train  out  of  town,  and  it  leaves  some 
time  about  seven  o'clock  in  the  morning,  requiring 
the  calling  of  the  actors  at  six  or  earlier.     Playing 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  135 

long  pieces,  packing  after  the  play  and  the  neces- 
sary supper,  reduce  the  hours  of  rest  in  such 
a  case  to  six  hours  or  less  ;  and  then  follows  a 
jolting  journey  after  an  uncomfortable  and  hur- 
ried meal — a  dreary  journey  of  from  two  to  ten 
hours,  and  in  an  ordinary  coach,  for  the  average 
actor's  salary  does  not  permit  the  luxury  of  a 
parlor  car.  All  this  is  bad  enough  for  a  man, 
but  think  of  a  woman  who  has  to  face  the  same 
conditions.  Bad  weather  makes  no  difference. 
The  journey  must  be  taken.  The  street  cars  do 
not  run  all  night  in  the  smaller  cities,  the  station 
omnibus  may  not  come,  and  the  actress  may  have 
to  walk  through  rain  or  snow  to  the  station  and 
travel  until  her  wet  clothes  dry  on  her.  The 
wonder  is  that  more  of  them  do  not  fall  ill. 

*  *  Think  of  her  condition  if  she  becomes  so  ill 
she  cannot  proceed  with  the  company.  Left 
behind  in  a  hotel,  generally  a  cheap  one,  among 
strangers  who  are  not  interested  in  her  welfare, 
the  picture  need  not  be  painted  in  detail  to  bring 
home  its  disconsolateness.  It  not  infrequently 
happens  that  on  these  one-night  stands,  after 
travelling  hard  all  day,  one  has  to  start  immedi- 
ately after  the  performance  or  at  such  an  hour 
that  it  is  useless  to  think  of  going  to  bed  before 


13^       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

the  journey  is  begun.  If  the  trip  extends  far  into 
the  day,  the  actor  has  to  take  his  meals  at  some 
wayside  station  or  railway  restaurant  where  only 
vile  cooking  and  dyspepsia  are  to  be  found. 
After  all  this  fatigue  he  may  only  arrive  just  in 
time  to  get  another  and  hasty  meal  before  the 
performance. 

"  In  spite  of  these  hardships  he  must,  for  his 
own  sake,  keep  up  to  his  artistic  standard.  Think 
for  a  moment  of  the  strain  under  these  conditions 
when  the  part  makes  exhaustive  demands  on  the 
emotional  nature,  for  even  the  leading  actors  have 
often  to  suffer  the  same  hardships  of  travel,  since 
the  parlor  car  they  can  so  well  afford  may  not 
be  attached  to  the  train.  This  sort  of  travel  may 
go  on  for  a  week  and  even  for  months.  In 
the  large  cities,  where  longer  engagements  are 
played,  comfort,  of  course,  may  be  found,  and 
such  engagements  are  always  hailed  with  delight; 
but  anything  more  wearying  than  this  incessant 
travel  it  would  be  hard  to  find.  The  childlike 
way  in  which  actors  are  treated  when  on  a  jour- 
ney deserves  notice.  The  manager  carries  their 
tickets,  a  system  for  which  various  invalid  ex- 
cuses are  made,  such  as  that  the  tickets  are  not 
issued  for  individuals,  for  the  order  is  made  out 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  137 

for  a  certain  number  of  people  to  travel  between 
certain  points  ;  or  that  actors  may  lose  their 
tickets  if  they  have  them.  The  consequence  is 
that  when  the  conductor  comes  in  the  actor  has 
to  explain  who  he  is  or,  not  infrequently,  the 
manager  accompanies  *the  conductor,  and  with 
outstretched  finger  and  loud  tones,  he  points  out 
the  members  of  the  company,  thus  :  *  That  's 
one  ;  there  's  another,'  and  so  on,  while  the  other 
travellers  stare  at  those  who  are  thus  indicated. 
A  mere  detail,  some  people  will  say.  Perhaps, 
but  it  is  just  such  details  of  our  lives  that  irritate. 
It  is  not  only  in  such  things  that  the  manager 
shows  his  lack  of  consideration  for  the  actor. 
The  rules  he  makes  and  compels  the  actor  to  sign 
are  simply  insulting.  The  manager  reserves  to 
himself  the  right  to  discharge  from  the  company 
all  persons  who  shall  be  guilty  of  conduct  unbe- 
coming ladies  and  gentlemen  and  calculated  to 
bring  disrepute  on  the  organization  ;  also  all  who 
shall  conspire  against  the  interests  of  the  manager, 
defame  the  members  of  the  company,  make  public 
the  private  affairs  of  the  concern,  or  by  other  con- 
duct manifest  a  disposition  to  throw  obstacles  in 
the  way  of  the  management.  The  actor  has  no 
alternative  but  to  sign.     He  knows,   and  the 


138       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

manager  knows,  that  if  he  does  not  sign  there 
are  dozens  of  others  waiting  anxiously  for  the 
chance  of  taking  his  place — often  at  even  a  smaller 
salary  than  he  is  receiving.  It  is  this  fact  on 
which  the  manager  trades. 

'*  If  the  manager  has  no  money,  he  carefully 
conceals  this  fact,  engages  a  company,  gets  men 
and  women  to  give  time  to  study  parts,  to  re- 
hearse, to  expend  money  for  dresses  ;  and  he 
takes  them  away  from  home  in  the  hope  that  the 
play  he  has  selected  will  attract.  If  it  does,  well 
and  good  ;  the  players  may,  at  all  events,  get 
their  salaries  or  a  part  of  them.  If  it  does  not, 
the  company  '  bursts  up '  and  the  actors  have  to 
get  home  as  best  they  can  ;  or,  if  they  are  fortun- 
ate enough  to  be  brought  home  by  the  manager, 
they  have  only  idleness  and  possible  want  to 
which  to  look  forward.  In  a  measure  the  actors 
have  themselves  to  blame,  but  many  of  them 
learn  nothing  by  experience  and  may  suffer  again 
forthwith  from  exactly  the  same  conditions.  In- 
deed, when  all  is  said,  the  fact  remains  that  the 
actors  are  themselves  the  most  to  blame  for  the 
abuses  they  suffer  because  they  have  it  in  their 
own  hands  to  unite  and  say  '  This  shall  not  be. ' 
If,  however,  anyone  were  to  propose  an  Actors' 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  139 

Union,  he  would  be  met  with  a  yell  of  execration. 
One  would  hear  of  nothing  but  *  degrading  the 
artist  to  the  level  of  the  artisan,'  as  if  the  artisan's 
calling  were  not  worthy  of  all  respect.  There  is, 
however,  another  probable  reason  why  actors  will 
not  combine  and  I  have  already  hinted  at  it — fear 
of  the  manager,  who  they  know  has  many  appli- 
cations for  all  the  positions  he  can  offer.  Any- 
thing like  concerted  action  by  actors  for  their  own 
benefit  is  unknown.  Yet  if  there  were  a  union 
among  actors,  they  could  compel  managers  to 
treat  their  companies  as  they  should  be  treated  or 
else  force  them  out  of  business.  The  better  class 
of  people  who  are  daily  going  on  the  stage  will,  I 
hope,  not  long  submit  to  the  managerial  methods. ' ' 
According  to  one  of  the  experts  in  such  statistics, 
there  have  been  no  less  than  two  hundred  the- 
atrical companies  playing  what  are  known  in  the 
business  as  '*  one-night  stands"  during  the  last 
season  in  this  country.  That  is  to  say,  the  com- 
pany plays  but  one  night  or  perhaps  but  one 
afternoon  and  evening  in  a  town.  The  fate  of 
most  unimportant  companies  is  to  play  one-night 
stands,  for  they  are  seldom  seen  outside  of  small 
towns  in  which  the  theatre-going  constituency  is 
a  small  one  and  sufficient  to  give  but  one  paying 


HO       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

audience  to  a  play,  no  matter  how  good  it  may- 
be. One  would  imagine  that  the  expense  of  daily 
railroad  trips,  the  transportation  of  baggage  and 
scenery,  would  eat  up  all  possible  profits  of  such 
companies.  But  as  a  rule  the  "jump,"  as  the 
journey  from  one  town  to  another  is  technically 
called,  is  made  as  small  as  possible  and  the  rail- 
ways, recognizing  the  value  of  the  theatrical  busi- 
ness, make  the  rates  low.  Otherwise  hundreds  of 
small  companies  would  disband -and  just  so  many 
thousand  dollars  a  year  be  lost  to  the  railroad 
company. 

While  making  some  inquiries  as  to  the  career 
of  people  who  pass  perhaps  their  whole  lives  in 
playing  one-night  stands,  I  was  introduced  to  a 
young  lady  who  had  just  finished  a  season  of 
twenty-nine  weeks  of  such  work.  She  was  tired. 
Nevertheless  she  willingly  gave  me  her  opinion 
of  the  business  from  an  inside  point  of  view. 

**  The  worst  feature,"  she  said,  ''  of  the  life  of 
an  actor  or  actress  who  can  get  no  higher  than 
the  one-night  stand  business  is  its  uncertainty.  I 
have  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  connected  with 
managers  with  ample  capital  who  can  and  do 
stand  a  few  months  of  bad  business  ;  but  it  is 
notorious  that  hundreds  of  small  companies  are 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  141 

organized  every  year  by  men  possessing  scarcely 
any  capital,  with  whom  a  few  weeks  of  losing 
business  means  the  disbanding  of  the  company, 
leaving  a  dozen  or  more  people  out  of  employment 
and  glad  enough  if  they  have  sufficient  money  to 
buy  railroad  tickets  to  their  homes.  If  the  aver- 
age actor  gets  employment  during  thirty  weeks 
of  the  year,  he  is  doing  fairly  well.  If  a  company 
plays  forty  weeks,  that  is  a  long  season  and  the 
actor  rejoices  correspondingly.  But  even  with  a 
season  of  forty  weeks  there  remain  three  months 
in  the  summer  during  which  the  actress  must  live. 
If  she  has  an  engagement  for  the  next  year,  she 
can  rest  in  some  village  where  life  is  cheap,  or  if 
she  has  parents,  she  may  live  with  them.  But  if, 
as  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  the  engagements  for 
the  next  year  are  not  made  till  autumn,  she  will 
have  to  live  near  New  York  and  haunt  the  agents' 
and  managers'  offices,  fearful  lest  the  chance  of  an 
engagement  escape. 

''  If  a  girl  takes  to  teaching,  dressmaking,  or 
even  works  in  a  large  shop,  the  engagement  is 
usually  a  permanent  one.  If  she  does  her  work 
faithfully,  she  may  count  upon  remaining  for 
years  in  the  same  place.  The  longer  a  woman 
serves  a  business  firm  the  more  valuable  she  is 


142       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

likely  to  become.  An  actress,  at  the  best,  never 
has  more  than  a  few  months'  employment  assured. 
At  the  end  of  the  season  of  thirty  weeks  she  must 
look  for  something  else — plunge  again  into  the 
struggle  with  hundreds  of  others  clamoring  for 
something  to  do.  And  she  will  be  one  year  older, 
and  consequently  so  much  less  attractive  and  less 
valuable.  I  speak,  of  course,  of  the  rank  and  file, 
women  of  no  particular  force  or  intelligence. 
Kven  after  the  contract  is  signed  she  is  not  certain 
of  the  thirty  weeks'  employment,  for  all  contracts 
may  be  cancelled  at  a  fortnight's  notice,  and 
should  business  be  steadily  bad  the  company  may 
be  disbanded.  This  feeling  that  life  is  assured 
only  for  a  few  weeks  ahead  is  wearing  on  all  but 
the  most  Bohemian  and  careless  natures.  To  a 
serious  woman,  especially  to  one  having  others 
dependent  upon  her,  this  lack  of  permanency  in 
the  employment  is  its  worst  feature.  An  oflSce 
position  with  a  business  firm,  at  $15  a  week  the 
year  round,  will  be  found  infinitely  better  for 
most  women  than  a  salary  of  $30  a  week  with  a 
theatrical  company,  not  only  so  far  as  actual 
money  results  go,  but  in  peace  of  mind. 

**  Now  as  to  the  earnings  of  the  average  act- 
ress.    If  a  woman  playing  good  parts  in  a  small 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  143 

company  gets  $50  a  week,  she  is  doing  remarkably 
well.  The  average  salaries,  even  for  leading 
parts,  are  below  that  in  all  but  first-class  com- 
panies. We  may  take  $40  as  the  salary  received 
by  a  girl  having  had  several  years'  experience 
and  competent  to  play  leading  parts.  In  some 
companies  she  has  to  furnish  her  own  dresses,  but 
let  us  say  that  her  costumes  are  furnished,  as  was 
the  case  during  the  season  I  have  just  finished. 
She  receives  therefore  $40  a  week  for  thirty 
weeks,  or  $1200  in  all.  Out  of  this  her  hotel  life 
will  cost  her  $15  a  week  at  the  minimum.  Then 
her  washing  and  an  occasional  extra  on  cars  and 
in  hotels  will  swell  the  total  weekly  expenses  to 
$20.  If  she  saves  up  every  penny  beyond  her 
actual  expenses,  she  will  therefore  have  $600  at 
the  end  of  the  season  upon  which  to  live  during 
the  five  months  that  must  elapse  before  she  can 
hope  for  another  engagement.  This  would  not 
be  at  all  bad  if  she  could  count  upon  getting  that 
other  engagement.  There  's  the  rub.  Judging 
from  my  own  experience,  I  should  say  that  fully 
one-third  of  our  professional  actors  and  actresses 
fail  to  get  engagements — that  is  to  say,  one-third 
of  the  profession  is  always  looking  for  something 
to  do.    You  can  imagine  how  demoralizing  such 


144       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

a  condition  of  affairs  is  to  the  people  themselves 
and  how  it  operates  in  keeping  salaries  down. 
The  woman  who  may  have  been  getting  $50  a 
week  will  take  $25  after  she  has  been  idle  for  a 
whole  season  ;  the  woman  who  has  been  getting 
$25  will  take  just  enough  to  pay  her  expenses. 
Taking  the  several  companies  playing  one-night 
stands  with  which  I  am  acquainted,  the  salaries 
run  from  $15  for  the  smaller  people  to  $50  for  the 
leading  man  or  woman.  In  comic  opera  com- 
panies, of  which  there  are  nearly  twenty-five 
playing  this  one-night  stand  business,  the  salaries 
average  from  $12  to  $15  a  week  for  the  women  in 
the  chorus  and  $20  for  the  men.  I  know  that  in 
one  of  the  best  New  York  companies  to-day  giv- 
ing comic  opera,  the  chorus  girls  receive  no  more 
than  $12  a  week,  when  on  the  road,  out  of  which 
they  have  to  pay  for  their  hotels  and  extras  ;  how 
they  manage  to  live  through  the  summer  is  some- 
thing that  I  should  not  care  to  inquire  into.  I 
know  some  girls  who  manage  to  save  a  few  dollars 
out  of  their  $15  a  week  during  the  season,  but  of 
course  this  means  hardship  ;  and  only  girls  who 
have  a  home  to  which  they  can  go  ought  to  dream 
of  indulging  in  the  luxury  of  a  tour  at  $15  a  week. 
*'  When  a  woman   has  to  furnish    her    own 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  145 

dresses,  every  cent  of  profit  from  a  fair  salary- 
may  be  swallowed  up.  I  have  a  friend  who  got 
an  engagement  at  $60  a  week  last  autumn,  but 
had  to  spend  $250  in  gowns  before  the  company 
started  out.  The  play  failed  to  please,  with  the 
result  that  at  the  end  of  the  first  month  the  com- 
pany was  disbanded.  My  friend  received  $250 — 
just  about  what  she  had  spent  on  gowns  that  will 
be  of  small  use  another  year,  and  she  was  able 
to  get  nothing  to  do  all  winter. 

' '  Bear  in  mind  that  the  ability  to  earn  a  salary 
of  $40  a  week  presupposes  a  good  deal  of  natural 
capacity  for  the  stage,  while  any  woman  of  aver- 
age intelligence  ought  to  be  able  to  earn  $12  or 
$15  after  a  few  years'  work  in  a  shop  or  business 
ofiice.  There  are  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  wo- 
men who  are  paid  from  $20  to  $25  a  week  in  these 
small  companies  playing  one-night  stands.  If  the 
season  lasts  the  whole  thirty  weeks,  there  is  a 
small  profit  for  them  at  these  rates,  but,  taking 
one  year  with  another,  the  girl  who  works  in  an 
oflSce  is  apt  to  be  better  off  financially,  thanks  to 
her  typewriter,  than  the  small  actress  who  may 
earn  $1000  one  year  but  only  $300  the  next,  and 
whose  expenses  when  she  is  earning  money  are 
twice  as  large  as  if  she  were  working  in  an  office. 


14^        The  Stage  as  a  Career 

*  *  We  see  a  good  deal  in  the  newspapers  about 
the  physical  hardships  in  the  life  of  an  actress 
playing  in  one-night  stands,  but  I  don't  think 
that  a  girl  in  good  health  need  fear  upon  that 
score.  Of  course  the  constant  travel,  varying 
from  one  to  ten  hours  a  day,  is  wearing,  but  every 
effort  is  made  to  give  the  players  a  decent  night's 
sleep,  for  their  health  and  spirits  constitute  to 
some  extent  the  manager's  capital.  A  fagged- 
out  company  cannot  give  satisfaction.  Some  of 
the  hotels  are  naturally  very  bad,  and  sometimes 
we  have  to  travel  at  uncomfortable  hours.  I 
remember  getting  up  one  morning  last  winter 
at  five  o'clock  to  take  a  train  that  left  at  six  for 
the  next  stop.  The  hotel  people  would  give  us 
no  breakfast,  so  that  we  left  hungry.  The  mer- 
cury was  below  zero  and  there  were  three  feet  of 
snow  on  the  ground.  Our  car  was  attached  to 
the  end  of  a  freight  train.  It  had  a  stove  in  it 
that  kept  one  end  of  the  car  red-hot  while  at  the 
other  end  the  water  froze.  At  daylight  the  train 
stopped  near  a  farm-house  to  which  the  men  of  the 
company  carried  the  women  through  the  snow, 
and  there  we  had  breakfast.  It  takes  a  good  con- 
stitution to  stand  the  life,  but,  upon  the  other 
hand,  the  strolling  player  sees  the  country  pretty 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  147 

thoroughly.  I  think  I  know  every  town  of  any 
importance  in  the  United  States  and  a  great  many 
of  no  importance  whatever.  As  we  played  but 
one  piece  the  whole  season,  there  was  no  studying 
to  do.  Our  time  was  our  own  except  at  the  the- 
atre. When  the  walking  was  good  we  usually 
had  an  hour's  stroll  every  day  to  look  at  the  town. 
Then  we  had  a  book-club,  that  bought  books  and 
magazines  in  which  we  all  shared.  A  few  of  us 
even  had  energy  enough  to  do  a  little  studying, 
incited  thereto,  perhaps,  by  the  report  that  Mr. 
Francis  Wilson  had  learned  French  and  German 
behind  the  scenes  during  his  waits  by  talking  to 
the  German  and  French  girls  in  his  chorus. 

**  Within  the  last  two  or  three  years  there  have 
arisen  new  terrors  to  the  small  actor.  In  the  first 
place,  the  cheap  houses  where  performances  are 
given  not  only  every  evening  but  on  four  or  even 
five  afternoons  a  week  have  practically  doubled 
the  labors  of  the  actor  without  increasing  his  pay. 
And  in  some  of  the  large  cities  of  the  West,  such 
as  St.  lyouis,  Chicago,  and  Cincinnati,  the  com- 
panies in  these  cheap  houses  are  expected  to  play 
on  Sunday  afternoon  and  evening.  Even  very 
reputable  companies,  such  as  the  one  to  which  I 
belonged,  had  to  take  a  share  in  this  Sunday 


148       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

work.  During  this  last  tour  I  sometimes  played 
as  many  as  twelve  performances  in  one  week,  and 
during  each  performance  I  had  to  change  my 
clothes  three  times.  It  became  a  life  of  dressing 
and  undressing.  Another  terror  to  the  unim- 
portant actor  is  what  is  known  as  the  cheap  stock 
company.  Every  large  city  and  many  small  ones 
now  maintain  stock  companies  where  small  salaries 
are  the  rule  and  where  the  highest  seat  in  the 
house  never  costs  more  than  half  a  dollar.  Not 
only  the  salaries  are  small  but,  as  the  play  is 
changed  every  week,  the  amount  of  study  and 
work  thrown  upon  the  actor  is  enormous.  Yet 
engagements  in  such  a  company  are  sought  after 
simply  because  the  actor  can  have  a  home  and 
live  in  it." 

Miss  Maggie  Mitchell,  who  made  quite  a  fortune 
upon  the  stage,  gives  by  no  means  a  rose-colored 
picture  of  what  young  women  may  expect  from 
the  life.  She  says  :  "  It  would  be  bold  for  me  to 
pretend  to  describe  the  chances  of  success  for  the 
actress  of  the  future.  It  is  a  lottery,  this  profes- 
sion of  ours,  in  which  even  the  prizes  are,  after 
all,  not  very  considerable.  My  own  days,  spent, 
most  of  them,  far  from  my  children  and  the 
comforts  and  delights  of  my  home,  are  full  of 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  149 

exhausting  labor.  Rehearsals  and  other  business 
occupy  me  from  early  morning  to  the  hours  of  the 
performance,  with  brief  intervals  for  rest  and  food 
and  a  little  sleep.  In  the  best  hotels  my  time  is 
so  invaded  that  I  can  scarcely  live  comfortably, 
much  less  luxuriously.  At  the  worst  existence 
becomes  a  torment  and  a  burden.  I  am  the  eager 
yet  weary  slave  of  my  profession  and  the  best  it 
can  do  for  me — who  am  fortunate  enough  to  be 
included  among  its  successful  members — is  to 
barely  palliate  the  suffering  of  a  forty  weeks 
exile  from  my  own  home  and  family.  For  those 
of  our  calling  who  have  to  make  this  weary  round, 
year  after  year,  with  disappointed  ambitions  and 
defeated  hopes  as  their  inseparable  company,  I 
can  feel  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart.  Each  sea- 
son makes  the  life  harder  and  drearier  ;  each  year 
robs  it  of  one  more  prospect,  one  more  chance, 
one  more  opportunity  to  try  to  catch  the  fleeting 
bubble  in  another  field." 

Miss  Cay  van  once  said  to  me  :  **  Suppose  a  girl 
succeeds  in  getting  a  place  upon  the  stage  ?  What 
is  she  warranted  in  expecting  at  the  close  of  a  year 
or  two  of  hard  work  ?  Taking  the  average  of 
the  girls  who  are  graduated  every  year  from  our 
dramatic  schools,  their  pay  for  the  first  two  years 


ISO       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

upon  the  stage  is  not  likely  to  exceed  $25  a  week  ; 
and  unless  a  woman  shows  peculiar  aptitude,  it 
is  not  likely  to  rise  above  that  figure  in  later 
years.  There  are  hundreds  of  hard-working 
women  who  never  receive  more  than  $25.  Stage 
salaries  are  deceptive.  Do  not  imagine  that  an 
engagement  at  $30  a  week  means  $1500  a  year. 
The  theatrical  season  is  supposed  to  last  about 
forty  weeks,  but  as  a  fact  it  is  more  apt  to  be 
thirty,  and  there  is  also  the  possibility  of  a  clos- 
ing at  any  time,  when  it  is  hard  to  find  anything 
else  to  do  before  the  next  season  begins.  The 
expenses  to  which  an  actress  is  subject  are  larger 
than  in  other  businesses  for  women.  It  will  cost 
her  at  least  $15  a  week  to  live  decently  when 
travelling,  and  in  many  companies  she  will  be  ex- 
pected to  spend  at  least  $100  upon  her  costumes, 
so  that  in  the  end  the  income  dwindles  down  to 
what  a  clever  woman  may  make  in  almost  any 
other  business. ' ' 

The  petty  fines  inflicted  by  some  stage-managers 
are  often  mentioned  by  actors  as  one  of  the  degra- 
dations and  hardships  of  the  profession,  and  yet 
it  must  be  admitted  that  without  discipline  there 
can  be  no  first-class  stage  management,  and  that 
fines  are  the  only  means  yet  devised  to  enforce 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  151 

such  discipline.  At  one  of  the  best -known  theatres 
in  New  York  there  is  posted  up  in  the  wings  a 
list  of  thirty-six  things  that  the  actors  and  actresses 
of  that  theatre  will  be  fined  for  doing  or  for  not 
doing.  To  mention  some  of  the  most  apparently- 
trivial,  a  girl  who  kicks  out  her  train  instead  of 
carefully  picking  it  up  is  fined  one  dollar ;  loud 
talking  is  fined  fifty  cents  for  each  offence  ;  late- 
ness at  rehearsal  calls  for  twenty-five  cents  for 
each  five  minutes,  and  lateness  at  performances 
for  double  that  amount.  Among  the  more  im- 
portant matters  are  forgetfulness  of  lines.  Any 
actor  who  forgets  his  lines  is  fined  five  dollars  for 
each  offence  ;  and  as  one  blunder  is  likely  to  upset 
the  player,  it  often  happens  that  one  piece  of  for- 
getfulness is  speedily  followed  by  another,  and  a 
whole  week's  salary  may  be  lost  in  half  an  hour. 
Loitering  in  the  wings  is  not  to-day  so  much  a 
matter  of  fine  as  it  used  to  be,  for  the  old-time 
green-room  has  now  almost  disappeared. 

The  green-room  of  other  days  was  to  some  ex- 
tent a  preservative  of  manners  back  of  the  curtain, 
for  here  the  members  of  the  company  met  every 
evening  while  not  actually  engaged  upon  the 
stage,  and  sometimes  even  received  visitors  from 
among  the  audience  between  the  acts.     In  the 


152        The  Stage  as  a  Career 

great  French  theatres  the  green-room  has  always 
been  a  social  institution,  that  of  the  Theatre 
Frangais  being  a  superb  room  adorned  with  his- 
toric portraits,  where  may  be  met  upon  an  im- 
portant night  many  of  the  celebrities  in  the  Paris 
world  of  literature  and  art.  In  latter  days  in  this 
country,  as  room  has  become  more  valuable,  the 
green-room  has  been  crowded  out  of  existence, 
with  the  result  that  the  players  have  either  to 
stay  in  their  own  stuffy  dressing-rooms  or  to 
stand  around  the  stage,  keeping  out  of  the  way 
of  scene-shifters  and  gasmen  as  best  they  may. 
This  change  is,  as  I  say,  a  loss,  inasmuch  as  it 
detracts  from  the  dignity  of  the  life  back  of  the 
curtain. 

There  are  some  managers  whose  contracts  con- 
tain very  many  such  annoying  and  almost  insult- 
ing rules  as  those  mentioned  by  Mr.  Cordova, 
but  the  average  contract  is  remarkably  free  from 
them,  and  perhaps  I  cannot  do  better  than  to 
give  here  the  copy  of  an  actual  contract  used  by 
several  of  the  best  New  York  managers  : 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  153 

AGREEMENT. 


ITbiS  Bgrccment,  Made  this  day  of- 


18 ,  by  and  between ,  party 

of  the  first  part,  and ,  party  of 

the  second  part : 

WITNESSETH,  That  the  said  party   of  the  first  part 
hereby  engages  said  party  of  the  second  part  to  render 

professional  services  as  may  be  required  of , 

commencing  on  or  about i8 


and  said  party  of  the  second  part  hereby  agrees  to  play 
and  perform  in  all  characters  for  which  said  party  may 
be  cast,  in  a  correct  and  painstaking  manner,  paying 
strict  regard  to  *' make-up,"  and  furnishing  the  proper 
dressing  for  the  characters  assigned  and  to  conform  to  and 
abide  by  all  the  usual  rules  and  regulations  adopted  by 
the  party  of  the  first  part,  for  the  good  conduct,  business 
or  otherwise,  of  the  company  for  which  said  party  is 
engaged. 

The  said  party  of  the  second  part  also  agrees  that 

will  not  render  services  at  any  other  places  of  amusement 
in  the  United  States  or  Canadas,  from  the  date  of  the 
commencement  of  this  contract  to  its  close,  except  under 
the  management  of  the  said  party  of  the  first  part. 

The  said  party  of  the  first  part  agrees  to  pay  said  party 
of  the  second  part  for  the  faithful  performance  of 

services  the  sum  of 


When  the  party  of  the  second  part  may  be  required  to 

glay  outside  of  New  York  or  Brooklyn,  the  party  of  the 
rst  part  agrees  to  pay  all  railroad  and  steamboat  fares 
during  such  period,  when  services  are  faithfully  rendered. 
No  salary  to  be  paid  for  necessary  time  lost  in  travelling. 


154       The  Stage  as  a  Career 


It  is  agreed  that  the  number  of  performances  per  week 
shall  not  exceed  eight  and  holidays,  unless  party  of  the 
first  part  shall  pay  for  any  in  excess,  pro  rata.    And  the 

said  party  of  the  second  part  further  agrees  that 

will  render  services  at  preliminary  rehearsals  free  of 
charge.  The  management  shall  have  the  right  to  lay  off 
the  Company  if  on  tour,  for  either  the  week  before 
Christmas  or  Passion  Week  if  required,  and  in  New  York 
City  on  Good  Friday  night,  in  which  ease  no  salary  shall 
be  demanded. 

And  it  is  further  agreed,  that  if  the  manager  shall  adjudge  the 
party  of  the  second  part  incompetent  to  perform  the  parts  assigned, 
or  if  hy  reason  of  illness  of  the  party  of  the  second  part,  or  if  by 
reason  of  fire,  accident,  or  other  unforeseen  event  (whether  such 
fire,  accident,  or  unforeseen  event  shall  come  or  happen  to  either 
of  the  parties  hereto,  or  to  the  Company  of  which  the  party  of  the 
second  part  shall  be  a  member),  the  party  of  the  second  part  does 
not  play  or  perform,  the  party  of  the  first  part  shall  not  be  required 
to  pay  any  salary  for  such  omitted  performances  ;  and  should  said 
omission  of  performances  exceed  one  week,  or  should  the  party  of 
the  second  part  absent  — self  without  permission,  this  contract 
may,  at  the  option  of  the  party  of  the  first  part,  be  cancelled,  by 
leaving  or  mailing  a  written  notice  to  that  effect  at  ....  last  known 
address. 

This  contract  can  be  cancelled  or  annulled  by  either  party,  upon 
giving  two  weeks'  notice.  Said  notice  may  be  in  writing,  and  left 
or  mailed  at  the  last  known  address  of  the  party  receiving  said 
notice. 

At  any  time  before  the  expiration  of  this  contract,  the  party  of 
the  first  part  may  give  the  party  of  the  second  part  notice  of  his 
election  to  renew  the  same  for  the  corresponding  period  of  the  year 
following,  upon  the  same  terms  and  conditions. 


This  contract,  or  such  renewed  contract,  may  be  assigned  by  the 
party  of  the  first  part  at  any  time  to  any  corporation,  individual,  or 
association  of  individuals,  assuming  the  obligations  of  the  party  of 
the  first  part. 

ITll  Witness  Mbereof,  We  have  hereunto  set  our 

hands  and  seals  this day  of 

A.D.  189     . 

.        [SKAI<]. 

Witnessed  by 

[SEAI,]. 


Lights  and  Shadows  of  the  Life  155 

Over  and  over  again  have  I  been  told  by  actors 
great  and  small  that  a  love  for  the  work,  enthusi- 
asm which  cannot  be  quenched  by  hardship,  mis- 
fortune, bad  parts,  small  salaries,  endless  travel- 
ling, is  the  first  requisite  for  the  true  actor's 
spirit.  A  certain  young  woman  who  for  the  last 
year  has  been  playing  a  part  of  less  than  forty 
lines  in  an  out-of-town  company,  and  whose 
nightly  appearance  does  not  last  more  than  ten 
minutes  all  told,  confessed  to  me  that  it  would 
break  her  heart  to  give  up  that  part  unless  it  was 
for  something  better.  The  hours  when  she  really 
lived  and  enjoyed  life  were  those  she  spent  on  the 
stage.  According  to  her  own  account  she  had 
had  a  very  hard  time  upon  part  of  the  trip. 
During  the  winter  she  often  found  snow  in  her 
dressing-room,  the  hotels  were  caricatures  of  what 
they  ought  to  have  been,  and  sometimes  she  did 
not  get  a  good  meal  from  one  end  of  the  week  to 
the  other.  The  tour  took  her  as  far  north  as 
Winnipeg  and  as  far  south  as  Tucson,  in  which 
place  she  played  one  evening  when  the  ther- 
mometer marked  120°  and  the  make-up  would 
not  stay  on  the  actors'  faces,  but  ran  down  in 
streams.  Every  night  for  thirty  weeks,  whether 
bitterly  cold  or  frightfully  hot,  this  girl  had  to 


156       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

dress  in  an  elaborate  costume,  to  fix  her  hair,  and 
make  up  her  face,  all  for  the  ten  minutes'  appear- 
ance and  the  few  lines  she  had  to  speak.  And 
her  salary  was  $25  a  week. 


CHAPTER  IX 


thk  actor  off  thk  boards 


INASMUCH  as  the  actor's  day  does  not  end 
until  nearly  midnight  or  after,  it  follows  that 
he  is  not  an  early  riser.  If  he  belongs  to  a  stock 
company,  with  changes  of  bill  every  week,  or 
even  every  few  days,  it  is  more  than  probable 
that  his  first  thought  after  getting  out  of  bed  will 
be  as  to  what  the  newspapers  say  about  his  work 
or  that  of  the  company  of  which  he  is  a  member. 
Actors  are  often  said  to  resemble  children  in  many 
ways,  and  probably  this  is  especially  true  with 
regard  to  newspaper  notices.  Kven  men  and 
women  of  exceptional  ability,  and  apparently 
possessed  of  much  common-sense,  are  depressed 
or  elated  by  what  the  newspapers  say  of  them  to 
a  degree  that  seems  comical  to  other  people, 
notably  to  those  who  know  how  thoughtless, 
irresponsible,  and  incompetent  is  much  of  the 
157 


15S       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

so-called  criticism  that  appears  in  our  daily  prints. 
For  one  article  that  shows  care  and  ability,  and 
which  the  actor  or  manager  might  ponder  to  his 
advantage,  there  are  a  dozen  which  should  have 
no  more  weight  with  him  than  the  wind,  for  too 
often  they  are  written  by  men  who  know  little 
about  the  matter,  who  go  to  the  theatre  simply 
because  something  must  be  said  about  a  new  play 
or  performance.  Upon  every  newspaper  there 
are  several  reporters  who  may  be  depended  upon 
to  give  at  least  an  intelligent  account  of  a  sermon, 
a  fire,  a  new  play,  or  a  dog-fight ;  they  take  what- 
ever comes,  and  do  the  best  they  can.  And  as  it 
happens  that  in  New  York  we  often  have  half  a 
dozen  new  plays  or  revivals  of  old  ones  upon  the 
same  night,  the  regular  critic  of  the  paper  looks 
after  what  he  deems  the  most  important  event  of 
the  evening  and  allots  the  rest  to  the  best  of  these 
young  men  who  are  not  engaged  upon  more  im- 
portant matters — let  us  say  a  slugging  match  or  a 
kidnapping  case.  The  result  is  that  dramatic 
performances,  often  representing  large  outlays  of 
money  and  much  hard  and  conscientious  work 
upon  the  part  of  the  actors,  are  sometimes  handed 
over  for  notice  to  young  men  who  have  no  sym- 
pathy with  or  knowledge  of  dramatic  matters. 


The  Actor  off  the  Boards      159 

What  is  such  judgment  worth  ?  Yet  about  every 
actor's  scrap-book  is  filled  with  articles  in  which 
the  praise  is  as  absurd  as  the  blame.  Of  late 
years  there  has  been  somewhat  of  an  improve- 
ment in  the  department  of  dramatic  and  musical 
criticism  upon  our  New  York  press,  and  the  time 
has  probably  gone  forever  when,  as  is  said  once 
to  have  happened,  the  proprietor  of  a  great  metro- 
politan newspaper  could  select  as  his  dramatic 
critic  a  man  who  knew  nothing  about  theatrical 
matters  ;  he  wanted  to  be  sure,  he  said,  that  the 
man  would  not  be  prejudiced.  Nevertheless,  as 
every  newspaper  cannot  employ  several  dramatic 
critics,  it  follows  that  a  number  of  the  articles  in 
this  department  must  be  written  by  anyone  whom 
the  dramatic  critic  can  get  to  help  him.  Upon  a 
few  of  our  great  dailies  the  editorial  writers  often 
undertake  such  occasional  work,  to  the  great  ad- 
vantage of  the  players  and  the  newspaper,  but 
somtimes  it  falls  into  the  hands  of  very  incompe- 
tent persons. 

To  the  actor,  however,  a  notice  is  a  notice. 
Whether  it  is  written  by  the  foremost  critic  in  the 
country  or  by  some  callow  reporter  from  the  back- 
woods, it  goes  into  his  scrap-book,  to  be  pored 
over  with  a  thrill  of  delight  if  it  is  favorable  ;  if 


i6o       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

it  is  not  favorable,  it  is,  of  course,  the  work  of 
some  bitter  enemy,  to  be  preserved  as  proof  of 
what  envy  and  malice  can  be  guilty  of.  Whether 
the  article  appears  in  the  leading  New  York  daily 
or  in  the  Cross  Roads  Weekly,  it  goes  into  the 
scrap-book.  And  perhaps  the  actor  has  some 
justification  for  this  impartiality.  The  press 
notices  that  appear  in  the  newspapers  of  small 
towns  are  often  more  discriminating  and  more 
just  than  those  which  the  actor,  especially  the 
minor  actor,  receives  in  large  cities,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  in  one  case  the  editor  himself,  often  a 
man  of  taste  and  judgment,  does  the  work,  while 
in  the  other  the  duty  is  assigned  to  any  reporter. 
The  scrap-book  of  the  average  actor  is  apt  to  be 
rather  a  pathetic  affair.  That  of  the  average 
actress  is  sure  to  be  so. 

I  have  known  some  players  who  never  read 
newspaper  notices  of  themselves  unless  they  were 
favorable.  They  employed  some  person  to  go 
through  the  papers  and  pick  out  what  would  be 
pleasant  reading,  suppressing  everything  else. 
They  did  this  upon  the  ground  that  adverse  criti- 
cism could  do  them  no  good  and  might  make 
them  nervous,  less  self-confident,  and  certainly 
miserable. 


The  Actor  off  the  Boards      i6i 

Ignorance  of  such  unpleasant  notices  was  a  bliss 
easily  purchased.  If  one  is  particularly  thin- 
skinned,  this  may  be  an  admirable  plan,  for  I 
have  known  very  mild  censure  to  create  quite  an 
absurd  storm  of  anguish  in  otherwise  sensible 
people.  I  have  in  mind  a  famous  tenor  whose 
secretary  had  to  translate  to  him,  word  by  word, 
every  line  that  appeared  concerning  the  concert 
or  opera  in  which  the  singer  had  taken  part  the 
previous  evening.  Sometimes,  when  the  expres- 
sions used  were  not  such  as  the  distinguished 
artist  thought  himself  entitled  to,  the  secretary 
would  try  to  soften  matters  and  even  to  skip  a  few 
words.     Any  such  attempt  was  pretty  sure  to  fail, 

however,  as  Signor  T kept  his  finger  on  the 

line  and  insisted  upon  some  sort  of  Italian  equiva- 
lent for  every  word.  If  the  notice  was  a  highly 
complimentary  one,  or  the  secretary  succeeded  in 
making  it  so,  the  tenor  was  all  graciousness  and 
smiles  for  the  rest  of  the  day.  If  the  contrary 
was  the  case,  the  unfortunate  secretary  was  ex- 
posed to  black  looks  and  even  to  flying  bootjacks. 
I  have  known  more  than  one  actress  to  confess 
that  an  unpleasant  newspaper  notice  made  her  ill 
and  unfitted  her  for  work.  Evidently,  in  such 
instances,  the  artist  would  do  well  to  ignore  the 


1 62       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

existence  of  newspapers.  Some  actors  believe 
that  a  scrap-book  full  of  good  notices  is  a  valuable 
introduction  to  managers  in  search,  of  actors,  and 
it  may  be  so,  in  some  instances.  As  a  rule,  how- 
ever, the  manager  is  apt  to  judge  for  himself,  and 
not  to  rely  upon  press  notices.  He  knows  too 
much  about  them. 

In  many  theatres  there  is  a  rehearsal  every 
day,  although  during  the  run  of  a  piece  it  is  often 
a  short  one  of  a  scene  or  two,  in  order  to  correct 
some  roughness  noticed  by  the  stage-manager,  or 
to  break  in  a  new  member  of  the  company.  The 
rehearsals  that  precede  the  production  of  a  new 
play  may  be  many  or  few  according  to  the  im- 
portance of  the  play  and  the  judgment  of  the 
manager.  As  a  rule  the  scores  of  rehearsals, 
lasting  for  months,  that  are  thought  essential  in 
great  European  theatres,  are  almost  unknown 
here,  and  once  a  piece  is  actually  running  the  re- 
hearsals are  made  as  light  as  possible,  upon  the 
ground  that  during  a  prolonged  run  the  actors 
get  tired  of  the  play  and  its  situations  soon 
enough  without  the  drudgery  of  constant  repe- 
tition. According  to  some  theatrical  contracts 
the  manager  has  the  right  to  call  a  rehearsal 
at  any  time.     This  was  the  tase  in  the  French 


The  Actor  off  the  Boards      163 

companies  headed  by  Mme.  Bernhardt.  It  was 
no  uncommon  thing  for  Sarah  Bernhardt  to  call 
a  rehearsal  at  the  close  of  an  evening  per- 
formance. After  the  audience  had  departed  the 
whole  play  would  be  gone  over  again,  much 
to  the  disgust  of  the  tired  actors  and  to  the  in- 
dignant astonishment  of  the  American  stage  em- 
ployees who  might  be  needed  to  assist.  As  a  rule 
the  American  actor  does  not  find  the  reheasals  too 
many  or  too  irksome.  If  the  author  or  stage 
director  is  a  man  of  parts,  or  the  star  an  artist  of 
merit,  rehearsals  are  apt  to  be  interesting  and 
highly  instructive.  The  little  hints,  the  com- 
ments, as  well  as  the  actual  directions,  given  by 
good  stage-managers  may  be  invaluable  to  the 
ambitious  novice.  A  rehearsal  under  the  late 
Dion  Boucicault  was  a  lesson  in  acting  to  every- 
one concerned,  from  the  star  down.  W.  S.  Gil- 
bert is  said  to  be  a  delightful  if  somewhat  caustic 
stage  director  at  rehearsal.  Sir  Henry  Irving, 
Sarah  Bernhardt,  and  Coquelin  are  all  nowhere 
more  interesting  than  at  rehearsal.  The  last- 
named  was  particularly  fond  of  illuminative  com- 
ment. I  remember  being  present  one  morning 
when  Coquelin  had  occasion  to  discuss  the  old 
question  as  to  whether  an  actor  should  really  feel 


164       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

the  emotion  he  tries  to  depict.  Coquelin  con- 
tended that  the  best  actor  remained  unmoved. 
To  allow  emotion  to  control  one  was  to  lose  com- 
mand of  the  situation  and  of  the  audience  ;  the 
realism  that  might  result  from  genuine  emotion 
upon  the  stage  was  not  art,  but  the  realism  of  life, 
which  was  not  what  the  stage  performance  needs. 
As  an  instance  of  how  ineffective  real  life  may  be 
upon  the  boards,  Coquelin  related  that  one  night 
when  playing  Don  Caesar  in  Marseilles  he  was  so 
tired  by  a  long  railway  journey  that  in  the  prison 
scene,  where  he  is  supposed  to  lie  asleep,  he  really 
did  go  sound  asleep,  and  had  to  be  sharply 
prodded  before  he  came  to  his  senses  again.  The 
next  morning  the  leading  newspaper  of  Marseilles 
said  that  M.  Coquelin  had  overacted  the  sleeping 
scene. 

The  actor  or  actress  who  never  finds  rehearsals 
too  many  or  too  long  has  found  his  or  her  voca- 
tion. Nothing  can  be  drearier  than  the  average 
stage  at  a  morning  rehearsal.  The  glitter  of 
theatrical  life  is  conspicuously  absent ;  the  lights 
are  dim,  there  are  no  music,  no  applause,  no 
laughter,  no  brilliant  costumes  or  stage  setting. 
When  the  leading  spirit  happens  to  be  a  Jefferson 
or  a  Bernhardt  there  are  compensations  for  hours 


The  Actor  off  the  Boards      165 

of  drudgery.  When  there  are  no  such  gifted 
persons  present,  a  long  rehearsal  is  apt  to  try  the 
soul  of  the  actor.  Most  actors  will  confess  that 
as  a  new  play  approaches  its  first  night  they  are 
apt  to  become  sceptical  as  to  its  value  and  to 
wonder  how  they  could  have  had  any  faith  in  its 
success.  They  are  simply  tired  of  looking  too 
long  at  a  picture  in  a  bad  light  and  without  a 
frame. 

The  actor's  afternoon  is  commonly  given  to  his 
private  affairs — to  his  family,  if  he  has  one,  to  ex- 
ercise, recreation,  or  study.  The  rather  flashily 
dressed  folk  who  may  be  seen  sauntering  along  New 
York's  upper  Broadway  between  three  and  five 
o'clock  of  a  fine  afternoon  are  commonly  spoken 
of  as  typical  stage  people,  which  does  the  profession 
as  a  whole  an  injustice.  It  is  unfortunate  that  the 
very  small  people  of  the  stage,  with  their  affecta- 
tions, vulgarities,  and  absurdities,  the  men  in 
their  "  loud  "  clothes,  the  women  decked  out  in 
cheap  finery  and  forgetful  of  the  fact  that  rouge 
belongs  only  to  the  stage,  should  so  largely  repre- 
sent the  dramatic  profession  as  seen  off  the  boards. 
The  actors  worthy  of  the  name  are  often  most 
modest  people,  rather  averse  to  advertising  their 
profession  than  otherwise.    Some  of  the  best  of 


1 66       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

them  shun  notoriety  like  the  plague.  The  late 
Kdwin  Booth  would  walk  a  mile  out  of  his  way 
rather  than  meet  a  newspaper  reporter. 

As  a  rule  all  actors  try  to  get  some  sleep  during 
the  day.  Mr.  Jefferson  makes  cast-iron  rules  as 
to  the  conditions  of  his  napping  hour.  Woe  be- 
tide the  hotel  employee  who  knocks  on  his  door 
during  that  sacred  hour !  Mr.  Booth  did  the  same 
thing.  In  the  following  note  from  a  well-known 
actress  who  sent  me  some  data  concerning  her 
daily  routine,  I  see  that  she  lays  special  stress 
upon  the  necessity  of  her  daily  nap. 

This  lady  writes  :  ' '  When  doing  one-night 
stands  my  routine  was  naturally  subject  to  changes 
according  to  hours  of  departure  for  the  next  town, 
the  length  of  the  journey,  etc.  As  a  rule,  how- 
ever, our  'jumps,'  as  railway  journeys  between 
one  show  town  and  another  are  called  in  the  pro- 
fession, were  so  arranged  that  we  could  leave  at 
a  comfortable  hour,  say  nine  o'clock,  and  arrive 
at  our  destination  in  time  to  settle  down  at  our 
hotel  and  take  a  constitutional  before  lunch,  or  to 
see  the  chief  sights  of  the  place.  There  is  almost 
always  something  interesting  to  see  in  a  town — 
new  sights,  old  acquaintances  to  visit,  or  a  little 
shopping  to  do.     Then  there  is  something  of  the 


The  Actor  off  the  Boards      167 

interest  or  excitement  of  opening  a  prize-package 
or  drawing  a  lottery-ticket,  in  the  fate,  the  good 
or  bad  fortune,  awaiting  us  in  each  city.  It  used 
to  amuse  me  to  speculate,  as  we  walked  about  the 
streets,  as  to  which  of  the  people  we  met  were 
looking  forward  to  going  to  the  play  that  night, 
or  in  which  of  the  houses  the  members  of  our  pro- 
spective audience  were  preparing  to  come  to  see 
us.  After  luncheon — or  dinner,  as  it  is  in  most 
of  the  small  towns — I  did  what  writing  or  sewing 
I  had  to  do,  and  then  at  three  o'clock  my  maid 
pinned  a  card  on  the  door:  '  Please  don't  knock,' 
and  I  took  my  afternoon  sleep  from  four  till  six 
o'clock.  People  have  often  said  to  me  :  '  I  won- 
der how  you  can  sleep  just  before  giving  a  per- 
formance. I  should  think  that  you  would  be  too 
excited  and  nervous  to  close  your  eyes.'  That 
was  my  trouble  at  first,  until  I  came  to  realize 
that  this  afternoon  sleep  was  really  as  important 
to  my  performance  as  a  careful  making-up  ;  and 
it  is  wonderful  how  you  can  school  yourself  to 
fall  immediately  into  a  sound,  refreshing  sleep 
when  you  realize  that  it  is  part  of  your  duty  to 
your  audience.  With  me,  at  least,  this  afternoon 
nap  was  of  the  utmost  value,  not  only  because  of 
the  refreshing  rest  it  brought,  but  because  of  the 


1 68        The  Stage  as  a  Career 

peculiar  effect  it  had  in  imbuing  me  with  the 
character  I  was  going  to  play.  I  would  fall 
asleep,  myself^ — filled  with  my  own  personal  inter- 
ests,— and  awake  filled  with  the  character  I  was 
going  to  personate. 

* '  My  supper  was  usually  nothing  but  steak  and 
a  small  cup  of  black  coffee,  a  heavy  meal  being 
as  bad  before  playing  as  before  singing.  And 
then  to  the  theatre.  I  aimed  to  get  there  at  seven 
o'clock  or  a  quarter  past,  allowing  always  a  full 
hour  for  making  up  and  dressing.  I  know  of  no 
more  heart-sinking  sensation  than  that  of  being 
belated  in  making  up.  It  really  makes  me  sick 
to  hear  the  overture  while  I  know  that  I  have 
barely  time  to  be  at  the  *  entrance  '  when  my  cue 
comes.  Suppose  some  little  accident  at  the  last 
moment  makes  me  late  !  To  be  late  at  an  '  en- 
trance' seems  to  a  conscientious  actor — at  the 
moment — as  serious  a  matter  as  a  case  of  life  or 
death.  And  woe  betide  the  actress  who  in  a 
strange  theatre  trusts  to  finding  her  way  at  the 
last  moment  to  an  '  entrance '  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  stage  from  her  dressing-room !  True, 
finding  your  way  through  gloomy  passages  be- 
hind the  scenes  and  avoiding  the  various  coils  of 
wire,  the  ropes,  traps,  and  other  pitfalls  of  the 


The  Actor  off  the  Boards      169 

stage  becomes  a  matter  of  instinct ;  but  there  are 
times  when  instinct  does  not  avail.  For  instance, 
some  stages  are  so  shallow  that  the  back-drop  or 
scene  has  to  be  set  flat  against  the  rear  wall  of  the 
stage,  leaving  no  passageway  back  of  the  drop 
from  one  side  of  the  stage  to  the  other,  as  is  usual. 
I  can  remember  several  times  when  I  should  have 
been  obliged  to  enter  on  the  side  my  dressing- 
room  was  on — which  would  have  been  awkward, 
inasmuch  as  several  people  on  the  stage  were 
looking  eagerly  off  on  the  other  side  and  express- 
ing their  delight  at  seeing  me  coming — had  not  a 
thoughtful  stage-manager  been  at  hand  in  the 
nick  of  time  to  pilot  me  down  a  dark  staircase, 
across  a  dim  labyrinth  of  cellars  under  the  stage, 
and  up  a  stairway  leading  to  the  opposite  side  of 
the  house.  But  even  with  a  pilot  this  takes  time, 
and  when  obliged  to  do  it  all  inside  of  a  minute 
one  is  apt  to  arrive  at  the  '  entrance '  rather  out 
of  breath.  The  performance  being  over  before 
eleven  o'clock,  we  were  usually  at  our  hotel  and 
asleep  an  hour  later.  The  only  supper  I  take 
after  playing  is  a  glass  or  two  of  milk  and  some 
bread  and  butter.  This  gives  me  sound  sleep  and 
a  good  appetite  for  an  early  breakfast. 

**  In  the  week  stands,  or  cities  where  we  could 


I70       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

really  settle  down  to  a  regular  routine,  my  days 
were  about  as  follows  :  Up  at  seven  or  half-past 
seven  o'clock  ;  breakfast  from  eight  to  nine 
o'clock — never  later — followed  by  some  sort  of 
gymnastic  exercise  in  my  room.  Then  writing, 
for  an  actress  playing  leading  parts  usually  has  a 
daily  budget  of  polite  notes  to  attend  to — thanks 
for  flowers,  answers  to  invitations  or  to  the  stage- 
struck  girls  who  want  to  know  how  to  become 
stars,  autographs  to  send  off,  etc.  I  believe  in  a 
certain  amount  of  time  spent  daily  in  vocal  exer- 
cise for  the  actor  as  well  as  the  singer,  and, 
fortunately  for  me,  the  actor's  exercises  may  be 
carried  on  in  so  low  a  tone  that  they  cannot  be 
heard  in  the  next  room.  This  about  fills  in  the 
time  till  luncheon.  The  early  afternoon  flies 
away,  and  varied  by  reading,  study,  calls,  etc. ,  un- 
til three  o'clock,  when,  no  matter  what  may  be  on 
hand,  everything  is  put  aside  and  the  *  Please 
don't  knock  '  card  goes  up,  the  shades  go  down, 
and  I  go  off  to  Dreamland.  The  rest  of  the  day's 
programme  is  the  same  as  in  the  one-night  towns. 
With  a  capable,  conscientious  company,  playing 
the  same  play  week  after  week,  calls  for  rehearsal 
are  rare,  as  the  nightly  performance  should  keep 
all  up  to  the  mark." 


The  Actor  off  the  Boards      171 

The  actual  work  of  the  evening  begins  for  most 
actors  a  little  after  seven  o'clock,  when  they  reach 
their  dressing-rooms  at  the  theatre.  Whether  an 
actor  is  to  appear  in  the  first  act  or  not,  he  is  ex- 
pected to  report  to  the  stage-manager  soon  after 
seven  o'clock.  While  the  front  of  the  house,  or 
the  auditorium,  is  still  wrapped  in  gloom,  all  is 
bustle  and  life  behind  the  curtain.  On  the  stage, 
men  are  rolling  the  scenery  into  place,  the  gas- 
hands  are  preparing  their  lights,  voices  come  from 
the  depths  under  the  stage  or  from  the  flies  far 
above  it,  shouting  out  directions  unintelligible  to 
the  stranger  in  the  land.  In  the  regions  devoted 
to  the  dressing-rooms  the  excitement  of  prepara- 
tion is  still  more  marked.  If  a  trunk  fails  to  turn 
up  or,  worse  still,  if  a  member  of  the  cast  does 
not  appear  on  time,  there  is  excitement  in  the 
air  at  once.  In  all  well-regulated  companies 
every  part  is  understudied,  the  minor  members 
of  the  cast  finding  the  opportunities  of  their  lives 
when  some  important  personage  fails  to  appear 
and  his  or  her  understudy  has  to  take  the  part. 
This,  however,  necessitates  many  changes,  and 
makes  every  one  nervous,  from  the  star  down. 
By  half-past  seven  o'clock  the  dressing  and 
making   up   must   be   well    advanced   and   the 


172       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

stage-manager  must  know  what  to  count  upon 
when  the  curtain  bell  rings. 

In  a  recent  play  that  made  a  sensational  success 
in  New  York  one  of  the  scenes  represented  a 
French  actress  in  her  dressing-room  making  ready 
for  the  stage  and  at  the  same  time  receiving  vis- 
its from  various  acquaintances,  male  and  female. 
Many  persons  are  said  to  have  been  shocked  at 
the  freedom  with  which  men  obtained  entrance 
to  this  dressing-room.  The  fact  that  the  lady  was 
more  or  less  undressed  seemed  to  make  no  differ- 
ence to  anyone — less  to  the  lady  than  to  any  one 
else.  As  a  picture  of  the  manners  and  customs 
that  obtain  in  the  dressing-room  of  the  average 
Knglish  or  American  star  actress  the  scene  in 
question  was  a  gross  exaggeration,  and  it  may  be 
worth  while  to  say  that  in  decent  English  and 
American  theatres  the  proprieties  are  strictly  ob- 
served. At  the  same  time  a  visitor  behind  the 
curtain,  unacquainted  with  stage  life,  with  its 
exigencies  and  hurry,  may  sometimes  be  sur- 
prised to  find  the  dressing-room  door  of  an  actor 
or  actress  half-open  and  the  occupant,  not  yet 
ready  for  the  stage,  chatting  with  a  friend,  man 
or  woman,  or  with  some  member  of  the  company; 
perhaps  the  actress's  maid  is  finishing  her  hair 


The  Actor  off  the  Boards      1 73 

or  putting  the  last  touches  to  her  costume.  The 
visitor  should  remember  that  dressing  and  un- 
dressing, often  half  a  dozen  times  during  the  same 
performance,  is  part  of  the  actor's  life  and  that  it 
is  done  under  stress  of  nervous  haste  and  excite- 
ment. Very  often  business  must  be  discussed 
while  the  player  is  dressing;  sometimes  the  stage- 
manager  has  to  give  instructions,  sometimes  a 
new  member  of  the  cast  has  to  be  coached,  scolded, 
or  encouraged.  In  short,  there  are  apt  to  come 
up  during  the  evening  many  matters  that  require 
immediate  consultation  between  members  of  a 
theatrical  company,  and  these  necessities  of  the 
business  have  led  to  a  certain  carelessness  which 
people  outside  of  the  profession  may  deem  repre- 
hensible. It  is  all  a  matter  of  custom  and  habit. 
**  Honi  soit  qui  maly  pense^^  might  well  be  writ- 
ten above  the  entrance  to  the  stage  dressing- 
rooms. 

Whether  the  actor's  day  ends  with  a  supper  or 
not  depends  upon  individual  taste.  A  successful 
actor  takes  precious  good  care  of  his  health.  It 
is  his  capital.  Some  actors  find  a  midnight  sup- 
per necessary  and  try  to  make  the  meal  a  pleasant 
one  at  which  the  hardships  of  the  life  are  for  a 
moment   forgotten.      The    well-known    singer, 


174       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

Marie  Roze,  once  told  me  that  one  of  the  greatest 
trials  of  a  tour  she  made  through  the  Southern 
States  was  the  difficulty  of  getting  a  decent  mid- 
night supper  in  small  hotels.  The  hotel  pro- 
prietors seemed  to  think  that  there  was  something 
riotous  and  sinful  about  such  a  meal.  So  essen- 
tial was  the  supper  to  Mme.  R6ze,  however,  that 
she  finally  bought  a  spirit-stove  and  cooked  supper 
in  her  own  rooms.  Her  afternoon  shopping-tour 
invariably  included  a  quest  for  a  good  steak. 
After  the  opera  was  over,  Marguerite  wielded  the 
gridiron  to  the  admiration  of  her  husband  and  of 
the  members  of  the  company  invited  to  these  mid- 
night feasts.  Moreover,  these  suppers  had  an 
artistic  value.  Mme.  R6ze  found,  she  said,  that 
Faust  made  love  with  more  fire  and  Mephis- 
topheles  was  more  terrible  in  that  famous  last 
scene  of  Gounod's  masterwork  if  she  told  them, 
between  her  sobs,  that  the  steak  for  that  night 
was  a  particularly  fine  one,  and  that  her  private 
ice-chest  was  full  of  bottles. 


CHAPTKR  X 

THK  STAG:^  as  a  CARKKR— CONCIvUSION 

IN  the  foregoing  chapters  I  have  refrained  from 
drawing  conclusions  or  pointing  a  moral.  I 
am  neither  an  actor  nor  manager,  and  such  knowl- 
edge of  the  actor's  life  as  I  have  been  able  to  get 
has  been  obtained  from  the  players  themselves 
and  from  articles  which  they  have  written.  It 
has  been  my  aim  to  let  them  speak.  I  have, 
however,  seen  much  of  theatres  and  theatrical 
people  during  the  last  twenty  years  and  have 
listened  carefully  to  much  talk  germane  to  the 
question  :  What  does  the  stage  offer  young 
men  and  women  of  ambition  and  intelligence  ? 
It  is  a  question  that  has  occurred  many  times  in 
these  pages  and  has  been  answered  in  different 
fashion  by  different  experts,  some  against  and 
some  for  a  theatrical  career.  Perhaps  it  may  be 
wise  to  present  briefly  the  conclusions  that  I,  as 
175 


176       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

an  unprejudiced  but  much  interested  observer, 
have  reached  concerning  the  whole  matter.  Cer- 
tainly I  have  no  prejudice  against  the  theatre  as 
an  institution  or  against  actors  as  men  and  wo- 
men. For  many  years  my  duties  as  a  newspaper 
critic  and  correspondent  have  taken  me  into  one 
theatre  or  another  nearly  every  night  during  the 
winter  season.  I  have  near  friends  and  relatives 
upon  the  stage  and  connected  with  theatres  in 
various  capacities.  I  am  not  fond  of  a  business 
life,  and  any  vocation  likely  to  offer  an  escape 
from  it  and  to  expand  the  artistic  side  of  a  man  or 
woman's  nature  seems  to  me  highly  desirable  and 
has  my  sympathies.  The  money-grubbing  to 
which  nine- tenths,  or  more  accurately,  ninety-nine 
hundredths  of  our  people  are  devoted,  the  worship 
of  the  dollar,  is  a  religion  with  which  I  have  small 
sympathy.  I  repeat,  I  do  not  think  that  I  can  be 
accused  of  harboring  a  prejudice  against  the 
theatre.  And  yet  were  a  boy  or  girl  of  my  own 
to  declare  an  intention  of  going  upon  the  stage,  I 
should  consent  with  the  greatest  reluctance.  If 
my  boy  or  girl  had  aptitude  for  professional  life, 
skill  in  writing,  music,  art,  or  teaching,  I  should 
consider  such  a  course  deplorable  and  nothing 
less  than  a  misfortune. 


Conclusion  177 

Theatrical  life  as  viewed  from  the  orchestra 
chair  of  a  first-class  New  York  theatre  and  the 
life  of  the  average  player  are  two  very  different 
things.  If  the  average  actor  could  play  in  first- 
class  theatres,  could  act  in  clean,  interesting 
plays,  could  have  a  permanent  home,  no  matter 
how  humble  ;  if  he  could  look  forward  with  some 
certainty  to  becoming  enough  of  a  popular  favorite 
to  earn  a  competency  in  the  course  of  years  ;  in  a 
word,  if  acting,  undertaken  seriously  and  with  in- 
telligence, offered  as  good  a  guarantee  of  a  fair 
living  in  decent  surroundings,  cheered  by  social 
consideration  and  the  reasonable  probability  of  a 
comfortable  old  age,  as  a  score  of  other  occupations 
open  to  men  and  women  without  capital,  I  do  not 
see  why  young  people  should  not  be  encouraged  to 
go  upon  the  stage.  In  the  ideal  community  of  the 
future,  the  theatre  will  probably  hold  a  high  place, 
and  actors  will  rank  with  the  most  valued  citizens. 
But  for  the  present  there  is  no  prospect  that  the 
stage  will  soon  offer  the  rank  and  file  of  its  followers 
any  rewards  commensurate  with  the  hard  work  and 
self-sacrifice  demanded  of  them.  I  say  this,  not 
unmindful  of  the  high  social  consideration  in  which 
successful  actors  are  held  here  and  in  England, 
and  the  larger  salaries  now  paid  in  good  theatres. 


17B       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

To  sum  up,  the  arguments  against  the  stage  as 
a  career  that  seem  to  me  unanswerable  are  : 
(i)  The  uncertainty  of  employment. 

(2)  The  helplessness  of  the  actor  as  an  inde- 
pendent factor  in  the  theatrical  world. 

(3)  The  lack  of  home  life. 

(4)  The  hardships  of  travel. 

(5)  The  danger  to  manners  if  not  to  morals. 
Every  actor  with  whom  I  have  talked  has  made 

much  of  the  two  first-named  drawbacks  to  a  the- 
atrical life.  It  is  notorious  that  about  one-third 
of  the  members  of  the  dramatic  profession  are 
always  out  of  employment,  and  this  affects  even 
men  and  women  acknowledged  to  be  competent. 
Many  of  the  plays  put  upon  the  stage,  even  by 
reputable  managers,  fail  to  please  the  public. 
Nothing  is  better  known  in  the  theatrical  pro- 
fession than  the  utter  impossibility  of  predicting 
the  fate  of  a  play.  Many  a  play  by  experienced 
authors,  and  in  which  authors,  manager,  and 
actors,  had  every  confidence  has  fallen  utterly  flat, 
with  the  result  that  the  manager  has  lost  money 
and  the  actors  have  found  themselves  out  of  em- 
ployment for  a  whole  season.  Kvery  production 
of  a  new  play  is  more  or  less  of  an  experiment. 
The  most  successful  of  American  managers  to-day 


Conclusion  179 

are  men  wlio  have  been  more  than  once  upon  the 
verge  of  bankruptcy.  Theatrical  ventures  are 
recognized  as  far  more  hazardous  than  ordinary 
commercial  ones,  for  in  times  of  business  depres- 
sion the  theatre,  as  a  luxury,  is  sure  to  suffer. 
People  must  eat,  and  must  wear  clothes,  shoes, 
and  hats  ;  but  they  need  not  buy  theatre- tickets. 
While  the  shoe  dealer  may  have  a  hard  time  of  it 
during  bad  business  years,  he  is  not  likely  to  find 
himself  wholly  without  an  income.  The  actor 
has  this  possibility  always  before  him.  In  the 
case  of  women  upon  the  stage,  every  year  after 
the  thirtieth  brings  increased  difficulty  in  the 
search  for  employment.  To  be  sure  there  is  an 
*  *  old  woman ' '  needed  in  every  stock  company, 
but  the  salary  is  likely  to  be  small ;  and  a  young 
woman  can  play  an  old  woman's  part,  while  an 
old  woman  cannot,  as  a  rule,  play  a  young  wo- 
man's part.  Old  age,  or  even  middle  age,  is  the 
terror  of  every  actress.  It  is  not  necessary  to  do 
more  than  mention  here  the  fact  that  while  the 
theatrical  business  is  a  hazardous  one  to  an  actor 
even  when  employed  by  a  reputable  manager,  it 
becomes  infinitely  more  so  in  the  hands  of  the 
scores  of  men  who  are  merely  theatrical  specula- 
tors, without  capital  or  conscience.  Kngagements, 


i8o       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

even  in  the  best  theatres,  are  never  made  for 
more  than  one  season,  A  man  or  woman  who 
does  good  work  in  a  business  house  or  factory  is 
reasonably  sure  of  a  position  year  after  year,  with 
the  certainty  that  his  or  her  value  will  increase 
with  length  of  service.  With  the  actor  it  is  other- 
wise. The  close  of  every  season  brings  about  the 
end  of  all  contracts,  and  after  a  certain  age  has 
been  reached  each  year  will  find  the  market  value 
of  the  actor's  services  less  than  the  year  before. 

An  actor  is  helpless  without  a  manager.  The 
small  shoe  dealer,  after  an  apprenticeship  of  a  few 
years,  may  scrape  together  some  capital  and  go 
into  business  for  himself,  perhaps  in  some  little 
village  or  town.  The  actor  can  do  nothing  of  the 
kind.  He  must  wait  until  some  manager  con- 
sents to  employ  him.  The  theatrical  business  is 
now  so  managed  that  a  few  men  control  the  out- 
put of  new  plays,  the  best  theatres,  and  the  best 
actors.  A  capital  far  beyond  that  which  the 
average  actor  can  hope  to  acquire  is  necessary  to 
obtain  plays,  theatres,  and  actors.  The  rental 
alone  of  a  New  York  theatre  holding  one  thou- 
sand persons  will  average  $2500  a  week,  which 
sum  pays  also  for  the  ushers,  ticket-sellers,  scene- 
shifters,  the  lighting  and  heating.     If  one  adds  to 


Conclusion  i8i 

this  enormous  rental  the  cost  of  the  company,  of 
the  play,  of  scenery,  costumes,  music,  advertising, 
it  will  be  seen  what  a  capital  is  required  to  face 
possible  disaster. 

lyack  of  home  life  during  nine  or  ten  months  of 
the  year  is  a  serious  objection  to  theatrical  life. 
Nowadays  constant  travel  seems  to  be  the  lot  of 
nine-tenths  of  our  players,  for  the  happy  ones  at- 
tached to  good  stock  companies  are  so  few  as 
hardly  to  count.  The  life  is  one  of  railway,  hotel, 
theatre,  railway,  hotel,  theatre,  day  after  day  and 
month  after  month.  Kven  the  members  of  stock 
companies  have  to  do  more  or  less  travelling.  A 
permanent  home  for  the  rank  and  file  is  out  of 
the  question.  It  has  been  said  that  in  this  respect 
actors  are  no  worse  off  than  commercial  travellers. 
But  the  '  *  drummers ' '  are  always  men,  and  can 
stand  the  discomforts  of  hotel  life  and  travel, 
while  half  the  members  of  every  theatrical  troupe 
are  women.  Moreover,  the  commercial  traveller 
is  usually  a  young  man  who  travels  for  a  few  years 
in  order  to  gain  experience.  The  older  the  actor 
and  actress  the  more  travel  they  are  likely  to  have 
before  them.  A  woman  needs  home  life  to  bring 
out  what  is  best  and  sweetest  in  her.  Maggie 
Mitchell,  whom  I  have  quoted  upon  this  phase 


1 82       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

of  the  life,  says  that  not  even  her  success  and  all 
the  comforts  that  money  could  buy  atoned  for  the 
loss  of  home  life.  For  men  it  is  not  so  hard  until 
middle  age  is  reached  ;  but  for  women,  after  the 
first  glamor  and  excitement  of  the  life  have  worn 
off,  the  lack  of  a  home  is  a  real  misfortune. 

So  much  has  already  been  said  concerning  the 
physical  hardships  of  a  stage  life  that  I  need  do 
no  more  than  refer  to  what  is  conceded  by  every- 
one connected  with  the  profession.  There  are 
people,  here  and  there,  even  women,  who  do  not 
find  the  life  hard.  I  have  met  some  young  en- 
thusiasts to  whom  every  hour  away  from  the 
theatre  was  an  hour  lost.  The  average  woman 
finds  it  a  hard  life.  Unless  she  has  excellent 
health  it  is  apt  to  be  a  dangerous  life,  so  exposed 
is  the  wandering  actress  to  cold,  to  damp  rooms, 
to  overheated  railway  cars,  and  underheated 
dressing-rooms.  She  may  have  to  act  in  a  low- 
necked  gown  while  arctic  blasts  blow  across  the 
stage,  or  she  may  have  to  wear  furs  when  the 
mercury  rises  to  the  hundred  mark.  She  may 
have  to  play  the  part  of  the  pampered  butterfly 
of  fashion  when,  owing  to  belated  trains,  she  has 
had  nothing  to  eat  for  the  last  ten  hours. 

That  the  wandering  life  forced  upon  almost  all 


Conclusion  183 

theatrical  people  leads  to  a  deterioration  in  man- 
ners will  be  admitted,  I  think,  by  all  candid  ob- 
servers who  mingle  much  with  stage-people. 
Some  strong  characters  may  be  uninfluenced  by 
the  constant  association  with  people  who  may  be 
frivolous  in  mind  and  manner  and  slangy  in  talk  ; 
such  people  may  preserve  a  native  dignity  and 
sweetness  while  playing  nightly  in  farces  in  which 
dignity  and  sweetness  are  conspicuous  only  by 
their  absence,  for  actors  have  little  to  say  as  to 
the  plays  they  appear  in.  A  girl  may  object  to 
playing  month  after  month  in  a  meaningless  farce  ; 
she  may  feel  that  she  was  born  for  Juliet.  But 
with  nineteen- twentieths  of  the  profession,  espe- 
cially the  younger  members,  it  is  farce  or  nothing. 
She  may  have  to  talk  slang  and  behave  like  an 
idiot  for  three  hours  every  night,  and  yet  if  she  is 
strong  enough  she  may  emerge  unscathed  from 
the  test.  She  will,  however,  have  to  be  of  rare 
temper  to  do  so,  and  such  characters  are  the  ex- 
ception. The  young  girl  who  joins  a  travelling 
troupe  will,  as  a  rule,  end  by  losing  the  manners 
and  the  speech  that  people  of  refinement  admire. 
It  would  be  a  miracle  were  it  otherwise.  The 
dangers  to  a  girl's  morals  are  no  greater  upon  the 
stage  than  an  unprotected  woman  will  meet  in 


184       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

any  other  occupation  in  which  she  is  brought  into 
contact  with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  and 
women.  A  noted  Knglish  dramatic  critic  has 
lately  stirred  up  a  hornet's  nest  by  some  declara- 
tions to  the  contrary,  and  the  English  stage  may 
be  a  more  dangerous  institution  than  our  own. 
So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  judge,  it  is  perfectly 
possible  for  a  young  girl  to  go  upon  our  stage  and 
remain  virtuous  and  self-respecting.  She  may 
suffer  in  her  manners  from  hourly  contact  with 
vulgar  people  ;  she  need  not  lose  her  self-respect 
or  the  respect  of  decent  people.  It  is  also  pos- 
sible, as  I  say,  for  a  girl  upon  the  stage  to  preserve 
sweet  manners  and  dainty  speech.  But  it  requires 
no  end  of  vigilance.  I  have  quoted  one  young 
woman  who  believed  that  her  manners  and  her 
speech  were  more  circumspect  after  two  years  of 
a  wandering  stage  life  than  they  were  before, 
simply  because  she  realized  her  danger  and  took 
measures  to  counteract  the  influence  of  a  Bohemian 
life. 

It  is  idle  to  deny  that  the  stage  has  great  at- 
tractions and  great  rewards  for  the  successful  few. 
Under  certain  conditions  few  employments  or  pro- 
fessions are  more  attractive.  There  is  little  of  the 
drudgery  of  routine  about  it,  its  higher  positions 


Conclusion  185 

are  well  paid  both  in  money  and  fame,  and  even 
in  the  smaller  companies,  where  much  money  or 
fame  is  not  to  be  expected,  the  life  is  often  a 
fairly  pleasant  one,  provided  the  people  of  the 
company  are  agreeable  and  kindly.  There  is  cer- 
tainly variety  enough  about  it,  for  the  actor  sees 
more  country  in  the  course  of  one  season  than 
other  people  in  the  course  of  a  lifetime.  Finally, 
there  is  that  greatest  attraction  of  all — the  possi- 
bility that  fame  may  be  attained  after  a  few  years' 
work,  and  perhaps  at  a  bound.  No  career  offers 
such  prizes  as  the  stage  if  we  take  into  consid- 
eration the  apprenticeship  required.  No  young 
doctor  or  lawyer  can  hope  to  attain  the  income  of 
the  successful  young  actor,  while  as  to  women, 
here  is  one  profession  in  which  woman  stands 
upon  a  par  with  man. 

I  believe  that  under  certain  conditions  the  stage 
might  be  an  ideal  employment  for  refined  people 
of  an  artistic  bent.  With  the  stage  of  to-day  it  is 
at  best  a  hazardous  experiment.  Side  by  side 
with  excellent  plays  from  which  decent  people 
may  derive  amusement,  rest,  instruction,  per- 
chance even  inspiration,  are  found,  even  in  the 
best  theatres,  plays  so  utterly  vile  that  one  feels 
it  a  sort  of  disgrace  even  to  witness  them.     To 


1 86       The  Stage  as  a  Career 

act  in  them  must  be  agony  and  constant  degrada- 
tion to  some,  at  least,  of  the  people  so  employed. 
But  putting  aside  this  question  of  the  moral  char- 
acter of  the  work  assigned  the  actor  of  to-day,  or 
its  influence  for  good  or  bad  upon  the  spectator, 
I  do  not  advise  an  intelligent,  ambitious,  earnest 
young  man  or  woman  to  study  for  the  stage,  be- 
cause I  am  convinced  that  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten 
the  same  intelligence,  energy,  and  taste  will  be 
productive  of  more  happiness  if  utilized  in  other 
fields.  If,  however,  any  reader  of  this  little  book 
makes  up  his  or  her  mind  that  **  the  play  's  the 
thing, ' '  then  by  all  means  the  best  course  to  pur- 
sue is  to  enter  some  dramatic  school,  of  which 
New  York  has  several  and  most  of  our  great 
cities  at  least  one.  Private  theatricals  also  offer, 
if  not  an  admirable  schooling,  at  least  a  hint  as 
to  what  the  stage  aspirant  may  hope  to  achieve 
later  on.  Several  people  now  prominent  upon  the 
professional  stage  to-day  were  graduated  from  the 
amateur  companies  that  flourished  more  than  they 
do  now  in  the  neighborhood  of  New  York  and 
Brooklyn  a  few  years  ago.  To  the  young  people 
who,  believing  that  they  are  of  the  stuff  of  which 
great  actors  are  made,  persevere,  often  in  the  face 
of  bitter  opposition,  I  can  say  that  at  least  the 


Conclusion 


187 


work  they  propose  to  do,  if  it  is  honest  and  sin- 
cere, deserves  the  gratitude  of  the  community. 
The  player  gives  far  more  than  he  is  Hkely  to  re- 
ceive. Whether  he  succeeds  or  not,  the  honest 
actor  at  least  tries,  often  under  disheartening  con- 
ditions and  at  the  cost  of  strength  and  health,  to 
amuse  and  interest  his  audience  ;  and  he  who 
succeeds  in  doing  that  certainly  deserves  well  of 
his  fellow-man. 


INDEX 

Actors  oflFthe  stage,  165 
Advantages  of  stage  life,  10,  11 
Anderson,  Mary,  50,  64 
Applause,  as  the  breath  of  life,  125 

Barrett,  lyawrence,  55,  74,  80,  103 

Behind  the  curtain,  129-132 

Boucicault,  Dion,  93 

Burnand,  F.  C,  social  status  of  the  actor,  27 

Cayvan,  Georgia,  views  upon  stage  life  and  training,  21, 

91.  149 
Cheap  stock  companies,  148 
Church  and  stage,  47 

Contracts  between  actor  and  manager,  126,  152 
Coquelin  at  rehearsal,  164 
Cordova,  Rudolph  de,  125 
Cost  of  instruction,  116 
'*     *•  living  for  an  actor,  127 

Daily  routine  of  actor's  life,  166 
Dangers  to  manners,  182 
Disadvantages  of  actor's  life,  12-16 
Dressing-rooms  in  theatre,  129 

Enthusiasm  indispensable  for  stage  work,  155 
189 


190  Index 

Fines  for  actors'  blunders,  150 
Forrest,  Edwin,  as  a  money-maker,  5 
Frivolity  of  the  stage,  63 

Green-room,  disappearance  of,  151 

Hamlet^  an  ideal  production  of,  65 

Hardships  of  stage  life,  146,  155,  181 

**  **  **        Miss  Mitchell,  148 

"  **  **        Marie  Roze,  174 

"  "  travel,  22,  181 

Health,  as  essential  to  stage  work,  26 

Home  life,  lack  of,  181 

Influence  of  the  stage,  61 
Instruction,  cost  of,  116 
Irving,  Henry,  48,  56,  88,  109 

Jefferson,  Joseph,  77 

Lack  of  home  life,  181 
Leading  man's  view,  9-16 
Leading  woman's  view,  16-20 
Linton,  Mrs.  Lynn,  52 

McCullough,  John,  68,  97 
Managers,  several  types  of,  128 
Manners,  dangers  to,  182 

**         of  the  theatrical  world,  24 
Mitchell,  Maggie,  49,  76,  81,  105,  148 
Modjeska,  Helena,  71,  77,  100 
Morris,  Clara,  82,  88,  124 

Newspaper  notices  and  the  actor,  157 

One-night-stand  experiences,  139 


Index  191 

Qualifications  for  stage  work,  McCuUough,  68 

"              "  •*  Mme.  Modjeska,  71 

"              "  ♦'  Barrett,  74,  80 

"  ♦'  Miss  Mitchell,  76 

"              •'  *•  JeflFerson,  77 

"             "  "  Miss  Morris,  82,  88 

"              "  "  Henry  Irving,  88 

"             "  **  Miss  Cay  van,  91 

Realism  of  the  stage,  66 

Rehearsals,  162 

Romeo  and  Juliet  in  the  wilds,  120 

R6ze,  Marie,  hardships  of  stage  life,  174 

Salaries  of  actors,  142 

"        **       "        Miss  Cay  van,  149 
Sargent,  Franklin  H.,  8 
Schools  for  stage  aspirants,  112 
Social  status  of  actors,  Burnand,  27 

"         *'        "       "       Irving,  48 

"  «*        "      "       Miss  Mitchell,  50 

Stage  art,  as  an  interpreter,  56 
Statistics  concerning  actors,  7 
Stock  companies,  cheap,  148 
Supernumeraries,  male  and  female,  37 
Swindlers  in  the  dramatic  field,  118 

Temperament,  dangers  of  the  artistic,  43 
Training  for  the  stage,  Boucicault,  93 

«'  McCullough,  97 

*'  Mme.  Modjeska,  100 

"  Barrett,  103 

"  Miss  Mitchell,  105 

**  Irving,  109 


192 


Index 


Traps  for  stage-struck  innocents,  118 
Travel,  hardships  of,  22 

Uncertainty  of  employment,  140 

Winter,  William,  6i 


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of  Oxford,  author  of  *'  English  Prose  :  Its  Elements,  History,  and 

Usage."     12" $1.50 

"  The  book  is  a  clear,  careful,  and  scholarly  treatise  on  the  English  Language  and 
its  use,  rather  than  a  work  of  science.  It  is  a  book  that  will  be  valuable  to  teachers 
and  to  students  of  language  everywhere.^'— lVasAtn£'ton  Times. 

THE  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  AND  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR. 

An  Historical  Study  of  the  Sources,  Development,  and  Analogies  of  the 
Language,  and  of  the  Principles  Covering  its  Usages.  Illustrated 
by  Copious  Examples  by  Writers  of  all  Periods.  By  Samuel 
Ramsey.     8° $2  00 

"  Mr.  Ramsey's  work  will  appeal  especially  to  those  that  desire  to  know  something 
more  about  the  history  and  philology,  the  growth  and  mistakes  of  their  native  tongue 
than  is  given  in  the  ordinary  text-books." — Baltimore  Sun. 

ORTHOMETRY. 

A  Treatise  on  the  Art  of  Versification  and  the  Technicalities  of  Poetry, 
with  a  New  and  Complete  Rhyming  Dictionary.    By  R.  F.  Brewer, 

B.A.     12°,  pp.  XV.  -j-  376 $2.00 

"  It  is  a  good  book  for  its  purpose,  lucid,  compact,  and  well  arranged.  It  lays  bare, 
we  believe,  the  complete  anatomy  of  poetry.  It  afEords  interesting  quotations,  in  the 
way  of  example,  and  interesting  comments  by  distinguished  critics  upon  certain  pas- 
sages from  the  distinguished  poets."— iV.  Y.  Sun. 

MANUAL  OF  LINGUISTICS. 

An  Account  of  General  and  English  Phonology.  By  John  Clark,  A.M. 
8°,  pp.  Ixiii.  +  314 $2.00 

"  Mr.  Clark  has  traced  the  English  language  back  to  its  foundations  in  his  work 
'  Manual  of  Linguistics.'  It  is  an  interesting  theme,  and  his  book  will  prove  very  use- 
ful for  reference,  for  he  has  culled  from  many  sources  and  gone  over  a  wide  territory." 
— Detroit  Free  Press. 

COMPOSITION  IN  THE  SCHOOL-ROOM. 

A  Practical  Treatise.     By  E.  Galbraith.     16°,  cloth    .         .         $1.00 
"  The  author  has  drawn  fully  from  the  best  writers  on  the  subject,  and  her  book  is  an 
epitome  of  the  best  thought  of  aXV— Boston  Transcript. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS,  New  York  and  London. 


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